THE AIM AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 135 



hand, the whole object of the secondary construction is to render 

 the primary facts intelligible, to bring out real relations between 

 the brute facts which constitute the scientific fact, and to lead 

 to the discovery of new brute facts related to those already 

 recognised within the system. 



The same kind of inversion of the relations of primary fact 

 and scientific construction is shown by the illustrations given 

 of the dictum that laws are frequently definitions. Such a one 

 is the law that " phosphorus melts at 44," which is asserted by 

 M. Le Eoy to be merely a definition of phosphorus. One feels 

 here in a peculiarly tantalising form the want of security of 

 the relations between ideas and the reality beyond which some 

 of us find in other presentments of Pragmatism. The definition 

 "works," substances melting at 44 are actually encountered, 

 but one has about their identity much the same kind of doubt 

 as pursued the school-boy who feared that Shakespeare's plays 

 were not written by Shakespeare but by another man of the 

 same name. 



67. 



Mach's splendid labours in this field are too well-known to 

 need characterisation. For the founder and chief apostle of the 

 new doctrine the concepts of Science are, as with us, means to 

 " <*/an end, an end which is conceived as " the economic exposition 

 of actual facts."* It is clear that this principle of " economy " 

 pushes analysis further than the principle of intelligibility- 

 which we have been considering. It suggests, as Machf applies 

 it, a value for the race as well as for the individual in what we 

 have-thought of simply as a psychological phenomenon. This 

 suggestion is of the highest interest and importance, and as 

 such may be gladly accepted. But when the same circum- 

 stance is made the ground upon which Mach is claimed by 

 Professor James (in the article already quoted) as, a Humanist, 



* Mach, Science of Mechanics, 1902 ed., p. 555. 

 t See op. cit., pp. 481 et seq. 



