The Scientific Method. 323 



we shall reach our destination ; that if we eat corn and 

 wheat we shall live and thrive, but if we consume poisonous 

 herbs we shall perish. Knowing the uniformity of Nature, 

 and ascertaining what causes produce given effects, what 

 ensues from the composition of causes, and what frustrates 

 results, we are able to predict what lines of action, what 

 conditions, are favorable to the end sought, and what are 

 opposed. We thus see that the practical science of social 

 amelioration is based upon a theoretical science. We must 

 know in order that we may believe and act. The practical 

 Scientific method must, therefore, be developed from that 

 exact knowledge for Avhich Aristotle and Bacon sought and 

 Avhich is the only sure foundation upon which to build. 



The factors would seem to be simple, being only men 

 dwelling together. But this association speedily evokes 

 the most intricate and perplexing questions, arising from 

 the circumstance that man is dependent upon his fellows 

 while at the same time his interests may be antagonistic to 

 them. Man tightly bound to man, but yet for deadly 

 conflict, is the spectacle presented. How to transform this 

 struggling mass of human beings in a living death, into an 

 orderly, contented and happy community Avherein the 

 desires of all are attained and each can realize his own 

 aims, is the problem of social improvement. 



Is the solution possible ? Let us study ISfature. And 

 by I^ature I mean all that has been produced to human 

 experience ; that stream of events which has proceeded 

 from chaos and ancient night ; which always is, and yet is 

 in ceaseless flux, the perpetual contradiction of being and 

 becoming over which the Ionic and Eleatic philosophers 

 debated, and which the acute and imaginative Egyptians 

 loved to symbolize in the myths of Isis and Osiris. Our 

 field of study is the solar and stellar universe, the globe on 

 which we dwell, the sequences of inorganic growth, and 

 the various forms of organic life, man and his progress 

 from the beginning. Seeing what is and ascertaining what 

 has been, we may perhaps determine what Avill be. If a 

 complete solution is not possible, an approximate one may, 

 perchance, be reached. 



Natural forces are of two general sorts, the mechanical 

 and the chemical. The one operate by antagonisms, the 

 other by assimilations ; the one are destructive, the other 

 constructive ; the one are characteristic of the inorganic, 



