THE APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE 173 



who will say that the poker " keeps the witch up the 

 chimney/' Experiment would show that the poker has 

 no effect whatsoever ; but it is not easy to undertake 

 seriously, because the circumstances of " drawing up " 

 a fire are so indeterminate. Most popular weather-lore 

 has a similar origin in false theory ; people are ready to 

 think that the weather will change when the moon 

 changes, only because they think that the moon might 

 have some effect on the weather. Again, the persistent 

 feeling that there is some intimate connexion between 

 names, and the things of which they are names, leads to 

 curious credulity. " Rain before seven, fine before 

 eleven/' would never have become a popular saying had 

 it not been for the purely verbal jingle. 1 



It is scarcely too much to say that every popular 

 belief concerning such matters is false, and can be refuted 

 by experience which is directly accessible to those who 

 assert it ; and that the reason why such beliefs have 

 gained a hold can always be traced to some false theory 

 which, nowadays, only needs to be expressed to be 

 rejected. Their prevalence indicates clearly how little 

 the majority of mankind can be trusted to analyse their 

 experience carefully, and to base conclusions on that 

 experience and on nothing else. And it has been 

 admitted that the most careful and accurate science 

 does not base its conclusions only on experience ; in 

 science, too, analysis is guided by theory. But there is 

 this vast difference : though science may in the first 

 instance analyse experience and put forward laws guided 

 by theory and not by simple examination of facts, when 

 the analysis is completed and the laws suggested, it does 

 return and compare them with the facts. It is by this 



1 There may be this truth in the saying that, in many parts of 

 England, continuous rain for four hours is unusual at any time of the 

 day or night. But if it is meant, as it usually is meant, that rain at 

 seven is more likely to be followed by fine weather than rain at six 

 or eight, then the saying is certainly false. 



