79 S THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



upon which we base our interpretations of that which does happen, 

 and our anticipation of that which will happen, is an interesting 

 psychological fact, and would be unintelligible if the tendency of the 

 human mind toward realism were less strong. 



Even at the present day, and in the writings of men who would 

 at once repudiate scholastic realism in any form, " law " is often inad- 

 vertently employed in the sense of cause, just as, in common life, a 

 man will say that he is compelled by the law to do so and so, when, in 

 point of fact, all he means is that the law orders him to do it, and tells 

 him what will happen if he does not do it. We commonly hear of 

 bodies falling to the ground by reason of the law of gravitation, 

 whereas that law is simply the record of the fact that, according to all 

 experience, they have so fallen (when free to move), and of the grounds 

 of a reasonable expectation that they will so fall. If it should be worth 

 anybody's while to seek for examples of such misuse of language on 

 my own part, I am not at all sure he might not succeed, though I have 

 usually been on my guard against such looseness of expression. If I 

 am guilty, I do penance beforehand, and only hope that I may thereby 

 deter others from committing the like fault. And I venture on this 

 personal observation by way of showing that I have no wish to bear 

 hardly on the preacher for falling into an error for which he might 

 find good precedents. But it is one of those errors which, in the case 

 of a person engaged in scientific pursuits, does little harm, because it 

 is corrected as soon as its consequences become obvious ; while those 

 who know physical science only by name are, as has been seen, easily 

 led to build a mighty fabric of unrealities on this fundamental fallacy. 

 In fact, the habitual use of the word " law," in the sense of an active 

 thing, is almost a mark of pseudo-science ; it characterizes the writings 

 of those who have appropriated the forms of science without knowing 

 anything of its substance. 



There are two classes of these people : those who are ready to 

 believe in any miracle so long as it is guaranteed by ecclesiastical 

 authority, and those who are ready to believe in any miracle so long 

 as it has some different guarantee. The believers in what are ordi- 

 narily called miracles — those who accept ^he miraculous narratives 

 which they are taught to think are essential elements of religious 

 doctrine — are in the one category ; the spirit-rappers, table-turners, 

 and all the other devotees of the occult sciences of our day are in the 

 other; and, if they disagree in most things, they agree in this, namely, 

 that they ascribe to science a dictum that is not scientific; and that 

 they endeavor to upset the dictum thus foisted on science by a realistic 

 argument which is equally unscientific. 



It is asserted, for example, that, on a particular occasion, water was 

 turned into wine ; and, on the other hand, it is asserted that a man or 

 a woman " levitated " to the ceiling, floated about there, and finally 

 sailed out by the window. And it is assumed that the pardonable 



