EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



If this be admitted, let us coin other and more 

 definite terms to express the quest for Reality, and 

 let free the ancient and beautiful word philosophy 

 for some study that is possible. Now there are 

 already two words which express the study of 

 Reality. One of them, metaphysics, has this 

 connotation only by accident. It was coined by 

 the followers of Aristotle to indicate the subject 

 which their master treated "after physics" in 

 the treatises composed after that on physics. 

 Those who regard it as of importance to use words 

 in legitimate fashion will protest against the vulgar 

 misapplications of this word, as in Haeckel's use 

 of it to indicate anything he does not want to un- 

 derstand. But, indeed, it has no merits in itself, 

 and its historical interest is not sufficient to justify 

 its continued use, for Aristotle was not the first 

 or the greatest of "metaphysicians." 



The proper term to indicate the study of Reality 

 is surely ontology or the science of being or reality. 

 It is of much more recent origin, but, unlike so 

 many terms, it was coined because it was want- 

 ed. Ontology, then, may be left to the academ- 

 ic philosophers or metaphysicians. Students of 

 science are well aware how it has injured their 

 cause in the past; they believe its prosecution to 

 be impossible and more than futile, and they are 

 wise to leave it alone. It is of some interest, how- 

 ever, to observe that the materialists, of whom 

 Professor Haeckel, of Jena, is the chief living rep- 

 resentative, believe themselves to be literally on- 

 30 



