126 



SELLING LUMBER 



Facts That 

 Can Be Re- 

 produced 



Study Failures 

 As Well As 

 Successes 



The World 

 Doing Five 

 Things 



scientific bodies. One is Herbert Spencer's. Spencer says that 

 science is -classified knowledge not classified opinion. Kreb's 

 opinions, if we should classify them, chapter by chapter, might 

 be arranged logically, but they might be entirely unscientific. 

 Unless you can reproduce what I say, it is not scientific. It 

 does not matter how true it might be. So there is a second defi- 

 nition of science, namely, science is the body of facts that can be 

 reproduced. Now, that does not include all truth. The realm 

 of truth is larger than the particular realm of scientific truth. 

 Scientific truth is that part of truth which you can re- 

 peat, and I can repeat, and the other fellow can repeat. 

 Truth is much larger than the scientific part of it. If a thing 

 happens once, but cannot be made to happen again, it is not 

 scientific, and yet it may be true. If only one meteorite ever 

 fell and struck this earthly ball, we would not have any chapter 

 on meteorites. But another and another and another fell, and 

 you can repeat the examination of that particular stone, and now 

 we have six hundred. One would have been just as true as sixty, 

 or six hundred, but we would not have a chapter in the science 

 of astronomy based upon the falling of one meteorite, because 

 the thing was not repeated. Once I can reproduce the X-ray, I 

 don't need to listen to Roentgen. I don't care what Roentgen 

 says about it; I can perfect it myself. The facts speak to us 

 in science, not the opinion of a man that they will occur. Herbert 

 Spencer's definition stands, but it takes reproduction by thou- 

 sands' of scientists to prove that it is so. So that your success 

 and my success in selling a thing is repeatable unanimously. You 

 can tell the other fellow how you did it, and hear how he 1 did it. 

 If we fail, we ought to study the failure. In science we study 

 the failure just as sincerely as we study the success. There is 

 a cause for failure. Nothing happens without a cause. Abso- 

 lutely nothing on earth happens, or in heaven or hell, without a 

 cause, and a wise man sits down and finds- out the causes of this 

 particular failure or of that particular success. Failures are just 

 as important in science as successes. 



Now let's see whether it is classified knowledge. I want 

 to give you the classification in which our art and science stands. 

 The world is doing just five things. Now, that simplifies the 

 work of the world. Every man is doing, if he is creating human 

 happiness, one of those five (unrolling and displaying a chart). 

 And the purpose of everything is human happiness. Human hap- 



