CHAPTER XIII 



Mr. Justice Holmes 



I 



FIRMLY believe there Is a blind spot In the eye of 

 every man and, although I know that I shall be accused 

 of lese-majeste, I was never more completely convinced 

 of this truth than with Justice OUver Wendell Holmes. 

 Most of his friends maintained that he was entirely aware 

 of his own intellectual powers and their limitations, but 

 his friends were only partially correct. He read constantly, 

 quickly, and he had a retentive memory. But he knew of 

 science only from hearsay, so to speak. He had a curiously 

 definite idea about science — an utterly erroneous one — 

 which is one held by many laymen. He lumped together 

 those sciences which may really be called exact with those 

 which are much more arts. 



Let me exemplify. Mathematics, physics, chemistr)'-, 

 that combination of biology with physics and chemistry 

 which we call physiology, all these may theoretically be- 

 come open books complete to the last word. It is theoreti- 

 cally possible to conceive that all of the possible questions 

 which concern them may be answered. This Is not true of, 

 say, systematic botany or systematic zoology. Here we may 

 record the end results, perhaps all the end results, in the 

 formation of genera, species, varieties, and races, but we 

 can never expect to postulate a knowledge of all the reasons 

 wliich have gone into the making of each of these cate- 



