342 



FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



chief of these is that whatever can not be stated in 

 terms of human experience is unintelligible to man. 

 Whatever can not be thought can not be lived. 



Philosophy has its recognised methods of procedure. 

 These are laid down in the mechanism of the human 



brain itself. Science has found these 



The test of truth. .. 



methods untrustworthy as a means of 



reaching objective truth. The final test of truth is this : 

 " Can we make it work ? Can we trust our lives to 

 it?" This test the conclusions of philosophy can not 

 meet. In so far as they do so they are conclusions of 

 science. As science advances in any field, philosophy is 

 driven out of it. The fact has been often noted, that 

 every great conclusion of science has been anticipated 

 by philosophy, most of them by the philosophy of the 

 Greeks. But every theory science has shown to be 

 false has been likewise anticipated. The Greeks taught 

 the theory of development centuries before Darwin. 

 But if Darwin's studies in life variation had led to any 

 other result whatsoever, he would have been equally 

 anticipated by the Greeks. In other words, every con- 

 ceivable guess as to the origin and meaning of familiar 

 phenomena has been exhausted by philosophy. Some 

 of these guesses contain elements of truth. Which of 

 these has such elements it is the business of science to 

 find out. Philosophy has no means of doing so. A 

 truth not yet shown to be true is in science not a 

 truth. It has no more validity than any other general- 

 ization not shown to be false. Helm- 

 The matter phi- holtz tdls us that philosophy deals with 



wi S th Phy df such " schlechtes St ff" such bad subject- 



matter, that it can give no trustworthy 

 conclusions. Science alone can give the test of human 

 life. The essence of this test is experiment. The tests 

 of philosophy are mainly these: "Is the conception 



