38 The Relativity of Knowledge. 



Agnostic perceives that all these theories are wrong, yet 

 knows that he is himself powerless to provide the right 

 one. He therefore adopts the one that practically is least 

 objectionable, and that, of course, is usually the trans- 

 figured realism of Science. To his mind there naturally 

 comes a condition of perfect freedom from bias of a fixed 

 type. He sees that pretensions to supernatural knowledge 

 are unfounded, but he also sees that the claims of impossi- 

 bility hurled at such knowledge by the sceptic are just as 

 little susceptible of proof. Fairy tales and Arabian Night 

 tales he may look upon with incredulity, but of the facts 

 they record he Avill not be caught asserting the absolute 

 impossibility. Modern Science itself has forced upon us 

 conclusions that seem as devoid of reason, to non-scientific 

 people, as the tales of Baron Munchausen. Take for in- 

 stance, the idea of the physicist concerning the universal 

 ether. Space, he tells us, must be filled everywhere, even 

 in a so-called vacuum, with a substance immensely more 

 elastic and dense than the densest steel.* The dense walls 

 we cannot penetrate are vastly less dense than the space we 

 think is vacant, and in which we move around without per- 

 ceptible resistance. The undulatory theory of light and 

 heat force him to this conclusion in spite of himself.f 

 School text-books usually endeavor to avoid this rock of 

 stumbling by avoiding its mention. Maxwell's new mag- 

 netic theory of the cause of the undulations strengthens 

 the implication by giving more evidence of it. The doc- 

 trine of the correlation and conservation of physical forces, 

 upon which we may safely say our whole civilization has 

 been reared, becomes an unthinkable jumble of unintellig- 

 ibility without it. Our railways, steamboats, steam looms, 

 and myriad forms of steam engines, our telegrai)hs, tele- 

 ])hones, electric lights and electric engines, our modern 

 cheiiiistry, Avith its means of supplying beauty in clothing, 

 purity in food, and medicines, have all been added by fol- 

 lowing the very line of thought that makes theoretically 

 necessary this dense, elastic ether. The doctrine of Evolu- 

 tion is itself the outcome of a chain of facts that point to 

 this seeming absurdity as a solemn truth. 



Only totally denying the existence of matter, or accept- 

 ing the more rational hypothesis of rhythm among attenu- 



* Jevon's I'rinciples of Science, Vol. 2, p. 145. 



t Familiar Lectures on Scientitic .Subjects, j). 282. 



