CARDINAL PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE 7 



(including paleontology), but partly to the biotic and physical 

 sciences jointly. 



At this end of the century, these four principles form the 

 commonly accepted platform of Science : the indestructibility of 

 matter, the persistence of motion, the development of species, 

 and the uniformity of nature. There may be, indeed is, a 

 question as to whether they constitute the entire platform of hu- 

 man knowledge ; but in the minds of scientific men there is no 

 question as to the verity of these principles so far as they go. 

 True, the temperate scientist must admit the possibility that any 

 or all of the principles may be erroneous ; but he does so, if at 

 all, in full realization that the admission is tantamount to denial 

 of the truth and trustworthiness of experience as a source of 

 knowledge. The scientist cannot deny that the cosmos is 

 shrinking toward nothingness, or growing by miraculous accre- 

 tion toward greater magnificence ; he is very far from denying 

 that the universe may be kept in motion by some extra-cosmic 

 source of power ; he hardly ventures to dispute the transi- 

 tional halting-place held by those who claim that at least the 

 first life and the highest mind transcend natural development 

 and demand a special supernatural explanation ; in certain cir- 

 cumstances he is deterred by the tolerance of good breeding 

 from denying that the world was fashioned from a lump of mud 

 brought up by a muskrat from the bottom of the sea, as taught in 

 sincere, albeit primitive, philosophy — he can only say that all 

 such explanations of things are outside the range of experience, 

 and hence beyond the domain of Science. It is also true that 

 the unscientific thinker — whose name is Legion — enjoys the 

 fullest freedom of rejection of any or all of the principles ; and 

 it can only be said that thereby he keeps without the straight- 

 laid fields of Science and within the broad and often attractive 

 purviews of not-science. Yet a significant sign of the times is 

 found in the fact that most men of civilized and enlightened 

 lands are coming to appreciate the coin of experience above the 

 dust of tradition, and are gradually entering, whether inten- 

 tionall}' or not, into the ways of Science. Only a generation 

 ago the very name of Science was the symbol of a cult to one 

 class of thinkers and a juggler's gaud to another class ; to-day 



