110 The Higher Usefulness of Science 



child's knowledge of humankind? Does any one ques- 

 tion that it would be considerable, definite and real? 

 Would not the child know its mother's form and coun- 

 tenance and voice, and many other things about her, 

 just as well as though it knew innumerable other peo- 

 ple? Unquestionably. It would have a descriptive, 

 but no definite knowledge of man, except in so far as 

 the knowledge of itself would be differentiated from its 

 knowledge of its mother. 



Authorities on logic make a good deal of the point 

 that "the concrete individual object can be described, 

 but not defined." And they say, furthermore, that 

 description is synonymous with "accidental definition," 

 this latter being again defined as assigning the "acci- 

 dents" of an individual. But since the "accidents" of 

 an object have been, according to much historical logic, 

 set over against its "essence," "accidents" have usually 

 been treated by logic as a sort of Cinderella, the 

 homely, despised sister, in the family of so-called 

 Predicables. 



I find justification for going thus much into logical 

 doctrine in the fact that recent biology has shown a 

 strong tendency to follow formal logic in exalting 

 essence and despising accidents. 



The practical point to be brought out is this: no 

 matter how insignificant, or obscure, or transitory, 

 may be a certain attribute of an object, in so far as that 

 attribute is positively and repeatedly observed, it fur- 

 nishes just as trustworthy a piece of knowledge about 



