42 



It is true that I have been an earnest student of Science and 

 of that Philosophy which is the science of science during the 

 time that has passed since I left Philadelphia a city in which 

 my early labors found generous appreciation, to Avhich I be- 

 came attached by the strongest ties of my life and which I 

 have ever remembered, as the exiled Greek remembered his 

 dulcis Argos, as the home of art, and letters, and refinement. 

 But of the studies of these past years it would Dot become me 

 here to speak. If any difficulties in science and philosophy 

 have been solved by them, they have not been in vain. 



It is implied in the toast, to which I am speaking, that there 

 are difficulties in Science and Philosophy and that mental 

 analysis may help to solve them. It is certain that there are 

 difficulties in Science. If we analyze it into its component 

 elements we shall find that it involves much faith as well as 

 knowledge ; it involves faith in the uniformity of nature, a 

 uniformity which has never been proved and which can never 

 be proved except within the narrow limits of our own expe- 

 rience, and which even there is disproved whenever you per- 

 form the miracle of lifting a stone from the earth ; it involves 

 faith in our own cognitive faculties, which the sceptic will 

 claim to have been delusive and which, as a matter of fact, 

 have misled mankind for ages ; it involves faith in some ulti- 

 mate Power or Principle upholding this assumed -uniformity 

 of nature and this assumed trustworthiness of our faculties, 

 and our agnostic friends tell us that this ultimate Power or 

 Principle is simply unknowable, inconceivable, a bundle of 

 contradictions. 



On the other hand, there are also difficulties in Philosophy. 

 If we analyze its various pretensions we find a large amount 

 of ignorance as well as knowledge. The physical philosopher 

 looks with wonder at the marvelous discoveries of modern 



