The Scientific Method. 67 



the objective standard of knowledge high above all individ- 

 ual thought, the objective criterion of truth by which right 

 thinking and wrong thinking are accurately distinguishable, 

 is the Scientific Method, the universal learning process by 

 which every individual acquires whatever knowledge he pos- 

 sesses, and by which science itself has become a vast body of 

 solidly established truth, over and above all individual ac- 

 quirements. Through the scientific method, the private 

 thought which is active in innumerable individuals becomes 

 vitally organized into public thought; and the supreme 

 organism of universal human reason gives authoritative law 

 to all individual thinking. Do you fancy you can think 

 like a fool and not be found out ? Science is universally 

 verified knowledge of a real universe which includes count- 

 less individuals ; and the very definition of a fool is one who 

 conceives himself wiser than 'science. The scientific method 

 of observation, hypothesis, and verification, by which alone 

 truth has ever been or can ever, be learned, and the validity 

 of which is itself the most certain of all facts known to man, 

 is the organic life-principle of universal human reason. 

 You are an ignorant man because you despise this universal 

 reason because you reject this universal law of all truth- 

 seeking and truth-finding ; and the fit reward of your igno- 

 rant self-conceit is the inextinguishable laughter of gods and 

 men." 



Here, then, if you please, we will drop the curtain upon 

 the stage and put an end to our little philosophical drama. 

 It has well served its purpose if it has brought clearly be- 

 fore you the irrepressible conflict between modern philo- 

 sophical idealism and modern scientific realism, and em- 

 phasized the importance, so far as sound thinking is con- 

 cerned, of a sound intellectual method in the pursuit of 

 truth. The question of method in this issue between sci- 

 ence and idealism is, at bottom, a question of fundamental 

 principles respecting the nature of ignorance and of knowl- 

 edge. 



The fundamental principle of idealism underlying all its 

 forms subjective, objective, absolute, or what not is that 

 knowledge is nothing but thought and ignorance nothing 

 but ceasing to think in other words, that the individual 

 mind knows only its own conscious states, and, from the 

 very nature of knowledge, can never know any reality ex- 

 ternal to itself. Hence no living or thinking man can be 



