624 "THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



How are we to conceive of it ? Given (in Aristotelian phrase) its 

 ovGia^ what is its ■notOTifiq^ its TToa6rr]g,^ and the rest, which go to make 

 up its idea ? " Existence " is, after all, only one of our three necessary 

 forms of thought : " Space " and " Time " are also necessary to our 

 thinking. And it is in vain for pure logicians to put on papal airs, to 

 forbid the question, to cry N^on possumus,* and to stifle all free thinking. 

 It is useless to say : " We have already, with razors of the utmost fine- 

 ness, split and resplit every emergent phenomenon ; we have, by assid- 

 uous devotion to the one single and undisturbed function of analysis, 

 examined every possible conception that man can form, and have 

 discovered everywhere compound notions, ideas that are ' impure ' 

 and capable of further logical fissures : salvation is only possible by 

 the confession that 'Something Is'; there rest and be thankful!" 

 It is all of no avail. Naturam expellas furca^ — she is sure to return 

 in armed revolt, and to demand, Who told thee that thou wast thus 

 nakedly equipped ? Reason is one thing ; but imagination is also an- 

 other. If analysis is a power of the human mind, so also is synthesis. 

 If you can not think at all without using the one, neither can you 

 without employing the other. Take, for instance, a process of the 

 " purest " mathematics — " twice six is twelve"; you were taught that 

 probably with an abacus, and the ghost of the abacus still lingers in 

 your brain. " The square of the hypotenuse ": you saw that once in 

 a figured Euclid, and you learned thereby to form any number of 

 similar mental figures for yourself. No : you may call the methods by 

 which mankind think " impure," or attach to them any other deroga- 

 tory epithet you please ; but mankind will deride you for your pains, 

 and will reply : " The philosopher who will only breathe pure oxygen 

 will die ; he that walks on one leg, and declines to use the other, will 

 cut but a sorry figure in society ; he that uses only one eye will never 

 get a stereoscopic view of anything. Use, man, the compound instru- 

 ment of knowledge your nature has provided for you, and you will both 

 see and live." Why, even so determined a logician as " Physicus " is 

 obliged sometimes to admit that " this symbolic method of reasoning is, 

 from the nature of the case, the only method of scientific reasoning 

 which is available." ® And Professor Tyndall, in the November number 

 of another Review, after complaining that " it is against the m}i:hologic 

 scenery of religion that Science enters her protest," finds himself also 

 obliged to mythologize ; for he adds (seven pages further on) : " How 

 are we to figure this molecular motion ? Suppose the leaves to be 

 shaken from a birch-tree, . . . and, to fix the idea, suppose each leaf," 

 etc. And so Professor Cooke writes : 



I can not agree with those who regard the wave-theory of light as an estab- 

 lished principle of science. . . . There is something concerned in the phenomena 

 of light which has definite dimensions. "We represent these dimensions to our 



1 Essence. ^ Quality. 3 Quantity. "* We can not. 



5 Put nature out with a pitchfork. * " Examination of Theism," p. 84. 



