126 



CHAPTER V, 



59. 



The pre-critical view that in certain concepts of Science we 

 reach the realities which lie at the back of perceived 

 phenomena, is one which will always have an attraction for 

 the actual workers in Science. It implies, perhaps, a certain 

 aloofness from practical life to resist conclusions supported 

 by evidence upon which one would act with confidence even in 

 aifairs of the highest moment. From this point of view Huxley* 

 pours ridicule upon those who would decline to accept the 

 geologist's reading of the palseontological record. If they were 

 consistent, he argues, they would decline to draw the usual 

 conclusions from the oyster shells outside the fishmonger's door, 

 or the mutton bone in the dust-bin. 



In the class of cases which Huxley adduces there are few 

 who would reject his conclusions ; there are few of us, again, 

 who would be satisfied, as Professor Karl Pearson leads us to 

 suppose that he would be,f to " describe and classify [our] 

 immediate sense-impressions and [our] stored sense-impresses 

 by the aid of the theory of evolution," even " had the 

 universe been created just as it is yesterday " ; or with a 

 theory of matter upon which the negative " ether-sinks " (to 

 which nothing perceptual appears to correspond) " would long 

 ago have passed out of the range of ether-squirts " (which 

 correspond to perceptual matter), so that we need not concern 

 ourselves about their fate. There are few, I repeat, who would 

 not be troubled with " obstinate questionings " as to the truth 

 as well as the " economy " of these conceptions. The scruples 



* In his lecture "On the Method of Zadig," Science and Culture, 

 p. 139. 



t Pearson, The Grammar of Science, 1st ed., pp. 418 and 319. 



