Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



And so on in all directions. Human thought 

 flying off at its tangents from Nature lands itself 

 in infinite nothings afar off, poor ghostly skeletons 

 and abstractions from Nature — which indeed is 

 all right, for human thought as yet can only see 

 ghosts and not realities ; but let there be no 

 mistake, let these ghosts not be mistaken for 

 realities — for they are not even compatible with 

 each other. The Atom that suits the physicist 

 does not suit the chemist. The Ether that does 

 for the vehicle of Light will not do for the vehicle 

 of universal Gravitation. 



It would be hardly worth while entering into 

 these criticisms, were it not evident that Science 

 in modern tinies, either tacitly or explicitly, has 

 been seeking, as I said at the beginning, to enounce 

 facts independent of Man, the observer. Seeing 

 that the ordinary statements of daily life are obviously 

 inexact and relative to the observer — charged 

 with human sensation in fact — Science has naturally 

 tried to produce something which should be 

 exact and independent of human sensation ; but 

 here it has of course condemned itself beforehand 

 to failure ; for no statement of isolated phenomena 

 or groups of phenomena ca>i be exact except by 

 the method of ignorance aforesaid, and no statement 

 obviously can be really independent of human 

 sensation. When a man says // is cold^ his state- 

 ment, it must be confessed, is deplorably human 

 and vague. // — what is that ? Is — do you mean 

 is ? or do you mean jcels^ appears ? Cold — in what 



no 



