756 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



who was a mythological being dead without descendants, that in 

 reality justice is not always the rule. The two words, truth and jus- 

 tice, which we are accustomed to couple, correspond in a certain way 

 to states which the very nature of things render mutually exclusive. 

 Some men, whom truth, the desire for knowledge above all else, 

 attracts, follow to their last consequences the dictates of reason even 

 though they drown in the bitterness of their dearest illusions. The 

 others, ever protected by that magic potion called justice, and which 

 some intuition, whence I know not, assures them must exist, deliber- 

 ately turn their eyes from exterior reality which at every step spoils 

 their dream. To them it is enough that a thing be just in order that 

 it be the truth. Their inner ideals are a suj^erior guide to outside 

 reality. 



The first mode serves as a mantle for diverse forms of materialisms, 

 rationalisms, positivism, scientism; the second rules as mistress to 

 various spiritual doctrines of which the most recent and suggestive 

 is pragmatism in its various forms. Contrary to its various prede- 

 cessors, pragmatism pretends not to ignore science. With varied 

 shades and pretenses, often modified by circumstances, these two 

 tendencies have separated men as far back as we go in history. Nor 

 can it be otherwise in the future. As long as our nature is what it is 

 are we condenmed to toss between these two extremes, which are 

 called intelligence and sentiment, reasoning and dreaming, the reality 

 and the ideal. We may sum up all history of the torments of huraan 

 thought by that name which Goethe gave to one of his most beautiful 

 books, "Wahi'heit und Dichtung" (truth and fiction). 



The conflict becomes especially bitter and irritating when it no 

 longer takes place between schools of thought but between individuals. 

 Sometimes one sect seems to be supreme. Oftentimes both lose. 

 The love for the ideal and the taste for the real, lost in the bitter con- 

 test, leave the soul empty and lifeless. Poincare's philosophy shows 

 how we may challenge both of these dogmatic extremes. Nor does he 

 do this with arms rusted and stacked in idle repose. He has nothing 

 in common with a vague eclecticism, which, like the costume of 

 Harlequin, made of pieces and bits, tries in vain to conceal with words 

 the wounds received and which no longer survives except in our col- 

 lege educations, those museums of antiquities. He attacks the 

 problem at its very foundation, assigning to each step its definite 

 limitations. He gives us reasons for doubt, but at the same time 

 reasons for action, for loving the beautiful and the true, even though 

 they may not be accessible. May we not love the stars even though 

 we can not touch them ? 



To a superficial observer scientific truth is beyond the pale of doubt; scientific 

 logic is infallible; if sometimes a scientist is deceived it is because he has overlooked 

 some conditions. 



