The Scientific Method. 63 



" You now assert," he would coolly have retorted, " that 

 mankind, a mere multitude of individuals, are wiser than 

 any one individual. But no crowd is so tall as its tallest 

 man ; no army on the march can keep up with its stoutest 

 pedestrian; no multitude of individuals is so wise as the 

 wisest man in it. But, waiving this point and conceding 

 your argument to be sound, you now refute yourselves and 

 prove me to be in the right, for your own boasted Coper- 

 nicus, when he first broached his nonsensical notion that 

 the earth revolves around the sun, was himself in a minor- 

 ity of one against the civilized world. By your own argu- 

 ment, then, Copernicus was ignorant ; and the civilized 

 world of his time, whose verdict of condemnation I do but 

 echo, was wiser than he, and alone understood the matter. 

 It is time for you to laugh at yourselves, not me, as igno- 

 rant. A mere majority of individual votes may elect a 

 member of Congress, but never yet established a truth." 



Biting as this retort appears, the critics of Mr. Jasper, 

 who were undoubtedly in the right, would not quite yet 

 have surrendered their case. We may conceive them as 

 making some such rejoinder as this : 



" Very well, then ; we give up our argument on that 

 point. We appeal now, not to the verdict of a mere majority 

 of individuals, but to the verdict of the facts of the uni- 

 verse. These facts prove that the sun does not revolve 

 about the earth, but the earth about the sun. When you 

 maintain the contrary, you fly in the face of the facts them- 

 selves ; and the facts themselves prove you to be ignorant. 

 In those facts the universe speaks for itself, and you are in a 

 minority of one against it. Therefore we now laugh at you 

 because you fancy yourself to be wiser than the whole uni- 

 verse." 



Would our idealist Jasper be silenced by this argument ? 

 Not in the least. His counter-argument would be ready 

 thus : 



" How do you know these ' facts of the universe ' of which 

 you talk so glibly ? It is a very pretty figure of speech to 

 say that the universe speaks for itself ; but the figure is just 

 as empty as any other ' iridescent dream.' I know nothing 

 about the facts of the universe except what I myself ob- 

 serve ; you know nothing of them except what you observe ; 

 no individual either does or can know anything about 

 them except what he himself observes ; and one individual's 

 observation is just as good as any other's. Now, my own ob- 



