MCGEE 



Science is an actual part of the everyday life of all enlightened 

 folk. So, at this end of the century, four principles of Science 

 are held implicitly or proclaimed explicitly throughout the lead- 

 ing nations ; and the adherents of the principles justify their 

 confidence by the unimpeachable testimony of experience. 



On summing the principles forming the present platform of 

 Science, it becomes manifest that they are interrelated in such 

 wise as to form a harmonious series, each dealing with an as- 

 pect of nature and the whole covering all nature in its more 

 conspicuous aspects ; it becomes manifest, too, that the four 

 principles are alike in two respects : in the first place the}^ are 

 each and all integrations of experience along the lines to 

 which they respectively pertain ; in the second place they each 

 and all rest on the postulate that experience furnishes a key — 

 and the only key — to nature. This correspondence would seem 

 to indicate that the four principles might themselves be inte- 

 grated in terms of their common attributes ; it also suggests that 

 the principles may have been really integrated, albeit intuitively 

 or subconsciously only, even before they were finally formulated. 

 Thus, the principle of indestructibility was but a generalization 

 of experiences of indestructibility, yet it could not have become 

 clear to any mind devoid of the assumption (howsoever implicit 

 or vague) that experience accurately reflects actualities; the 

 principle of persistence was similarly a generalization of ex- 

 periences, yet it could not have been grasped without the 

 assumption that experiences of motion and duration are verit- 

 able ; so, too, the principle of development involves the postu- 

 late that the sequence pictured in the mind is the reflection of a 

 real sequence in nature ; while the principle of uniformity de- 

 mands the assumption that the mind of man is a faithful mirror 

 of nature. Doubtless the essential postulate remained unformu- 

 lated and half unrealized because of the preoccupation of the 

 knowledge makers ; Lavoisier was too busy over chemical re- 

 actions to give much thought to the mechanism of his own mind, 

 Joule confined his apperception to extra-mental phenomena, 

 Darwin remained naively negligent of his ownadmirable men- 

 tations, and even Huxley deliberately dropped the veil of un- 



