78 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM n 



does happen, and our anticipation of that which 

 will happen, is an interesting psychological fact ; 

 and would be unintelligible if the tendency of 

 the human mind towards realism were less strong. 

 Even at the present day, and in the writings of 

 men who would at once repudiate scholastic realism 

 in any form, " law " is often inadvertently em- 

 ployed in the sense of cause, just as, in common 

 life, a man will say that he is compelled by the 

 law to do so and so, when, in point of fact, all he 

 means is that the law orders him to do it, and 

 tells him what will happen if he does not do it. 

 We commonly hear of bodies falling to the ground 

 by reason of the law of gravitation, whereas that law 

 is simply the record of the fact that, according to 

 all experience, they have so fallen (when free to 

 move), and of the grounds of a reasonable expec- 

 tation that they will so fall. If it should be worth 

 anybody's while to seek for examples of such 

 misuse of language on my own part, I am not at 

 all sure he might not succeed, though I have 

 usually been on my guard against such looseness 

 of expression. If I am guilty, I do penance before- 

 hand, and only hope that I may thereby deter 

 others from committing the like fault. And I 

 venture on this personal observation by way of 

 showing that I have no wish to bear hardly 

 on the preacher for falling into an error for which 

 he might find good precedents. But it is one of 

 those errors which, in the case of a person engaged 



