Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 115 



of gravitation, or any other so-called "force," is 

 that it is a name for the hypothetical cause of an 

 observed order of facts. 



Thus, when the Duke of Argyll says : " Force, as- 

 certained according to some measure of its operation 

 this is indeed one of the definitions, but only 

 one, of a scientific law " (p. 71) I reply that it is a 

 definition which must be repudiated by every one 

 who possesses an adequate acquaintance with 

 either the facts, or the philosophy, of science, and be 

 relegated to the limbo of pseudo-scientific fallacies. 

 If the human mind had never entertained this 

 notion of " force," nay, if it substituted bare in- 

 variable succession for the ordinary notion of 

 causation, the idea of law, as the expression of a 

 constantly-observed order, which generates a cor- 

 responding intensity of expectation in our minds, 

 would have exactly the same value, and play its 

 part in real science, exactly as it does now. 



It is needless to extend further the present 

 excursus on the origin and history of modern 

 pseudo-science. Under such high patronage as 

 it has enjoyed, it has grown and flourished until, 

 nowadays, it is becoming somewhat rampant. 

 It has its weekly " Ephemerides," in which every 

 new pseudo-scientific mare's-nest is hailed and 

 belauded with the unconscious unfairness of 

 ignorance ; and an army of " reconcilers/' enlisted 

 in its service, whose business seems to be to mix 

 the black of dogma and the white of science into 



