224 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



empiricism. Compare the science of medicine, say of the 

 fourteenth century, with that of to-day. Thousands of 

 drugs and recipes as well as charms, then used in all 

 faith, have been utterly discarded. Many were based on 

 the a priori notion that " like cures like," so that ground 

 up cherry-stones were supposed to be a remedy for stone ; 

 plants with a yellow juice, as the celandine, would cure 

 jaundice, etc. 



Who will pronounce the science of medicine to-day 

 as infallible, or as " the one thing certain (7) " ? 



Has science solved all the problems of any one branch 

 of knowledge to-day ? Experts in every line know that 

 theories and working hypotheses are all that can be held 

 on many points. 



Or again, Does modern science know no reed, broken 

 or unbroken, upon which it leans ? 



Let us follow the author's words : " Science courts the 

 most rigorous investigation ". Well, I have given it in 

 the matter of Darwinism ; and the result of the investiga- 

 tion is that this much-valued basis of Rationalism and 

 Materialistic Monism has not a particle of evidence to 

 support it. 



The author of Mr. Balfour s Apologetics replied to 

 my observations that he ignores too much the evidence 

 of inductive evidence (i.e., the accumulation of coinciden- 

 ces and probabilities), and says, " I do not ignore this 

 fact, but I would point out that all inductive evidence 

 rests ultimately on a basis of observation and experi- 

 ment Induction is a generalisation from experience." 

 Experience, however, is not cxpcriinent. We experience 

 the difference between day and night ; but no experiment 

 can prove that the sun does not go round the world in 

 twenty-four hours. A pendulum set swinging north and 

 south will soon appear to be swinging between north and 



