A MODEL OF NATURE. 181 



necessarily discredit the method adopted. In scientific theories, as in 

 the world around us, there is a survival of the fittest, and Dr. James 

 Ward's unsympathetic account of the blunders of those whose work 

 after all has shed glon^ on the nineteenth century, might mutatis 

 mutandis stand for a description of the history of the advance of civil- 

 ization. ''The story of the progress so far," lie tells us. "is briefly 

 this: Divergence between theory and fact one part of the way, the 

 wreckage of abandoned fictions for the rest, with an unattainable goal 

 of phenomenal nihilism and ultraphysical mechanism beyond."* 



"The path of progress," says Prof. Karl Pearson, "is strewn with 

 the wreck of nations. Traces are everywhere to be seen of the heca- 

 tombs of inferior races and of victims who found not the narrow 

 way to the greater perfection. Yet these dead peoples are in very 

 truth the stepping-stones on which mankind has arisen to the higher 

 intellectual and deeper emotional life of to-day." 1 ' 



It is only necessary to add that the progress of society is directed 

 toward an unattainable goal of universal contentment to make the 

 parallel complete. 



And so, in the one case as in the other, we may leave "the dead 

 to bury the dead. 1 "' The question before us is not whether we too may 

 not be trusting to false ideas, erroneous experiments, evanescent 

 theories. No doubt we are; but, without making an insolent claim to 

 be better than our fathers, we ma} T fairly contend that, amid much 

 that is uncertain and temporary, some of the fundamental conceptions, 

 the root ideas of science, are so grounded on reason and fact that we 

 can not but regard them as an aspect of the very truth. 



Enough has, perhaps, now been said on this point for my immediate 

 purpose. The argument as to the constitution of matter could be 

 developed further in the manner I have hitherto adopted, viz, by 

 series of propositions, the proof of each of which is based upon a few- 

 crucial phenomena. In particular, if matter is divided into moving 

 granules or particles, the phenomenon of cohesion proves that there 

 must be mutual actions between them analogous to those which take 

 place between large masses of matter, and which we ascribe to force, 

 thereby indicating the regular, unvarying operation of active ma- 

 chinery which we have not yet the means of adequately understanding. 

 For the moment, I do not wish to extend the line of reasoning that 

 has been followed. My main object is to show that the notion of the 

 existence of ultraphysical entities and the leading outlines of the 

 atomic theory are forced upon us at the beginning of our study of 

 nature, not only by a priori considerations, but in the attempt to com- 

 prehend the results of even the simplest observation. These outlines 

 can not be effaced by the difficulties which undoubtedly arise in filling 



a James Ward, Naturalism ami Agnosticism, Vol. I, p. 153. 



b Karl Pearson, National Life from the Standpoint of Science, p. 62. 



