The Days of a Man 1910 



it has had, for I put some of my best thought into it. 

 The central essay was written in 1893 and published 

 in The Popular Science Monthly for August of that 

 year. I mention this fact because my article con- 

 tained a compact statement of the philosophical doc- 

 trine now known as Pragmatism before that word had 

 been accepted, and therefore prior to its trenchant 

 elucidations by William James, John Dewey, Addi- 

 son W. Moore, F. C. S. Schiller of Oxford, and others. 

 My effort was incited by three heretical attacks on the 

 integrity of science, one by the Marquis of Salisbury, 

 one by Arthur J. Balfour, and one by Ernst Haeckel. 

 Salisbury patted science on the back and warned 

 it against disturbing by its methods what we already 

 Bdfour know from higher sources. Balfour demonstrated 

 and truth fa^ even at best science is carried on "in a dimly 

 lighted room"; we can never be sure of our senses, 

 our instruments of precision, our logic, or anything 

 else. Wherefore, because what we know to be true is 

 , so hazy and incomplete, what we know to be not true 

 is in the same fix. Hence, what we derive from intui- 

 tion and tradition is about as trustworthy as what we 

 attain by observation and induction, and therefore 

 just as fit for belief. "Balfour made facts into mys- 

 teries in order to prove that mysteries are facts." 

 H tucker* Haeckel's central thesis is a form of Monism, the 

 dogmatism contention that all things are of one essence, where- 

 fore all organisms are merely products of the master 

 element, carbon, and all chemical elements variants 

 of one universal world stuff, protyl. He further in- 

 sists that any one who fails to accept Monism is either 

 dishonest or unfit to form a judgment. 



As to these claims I may say that no tests within 

 our range demonstrate all material things to be of 



C 294 3 



