JOHN WESLEY POWELL DAVIS 



second definition should be replaced by an implied multitude 

 of such sciences in the third ! 



Powell's epigrammatic rendering of the contrast between the 

 philosophies of savagery and civilization have already been 

 quoted. He naturally found little value in metaphysics, which 

 he rightly viewed as the very opposite of science, and hence 

 erroneous. "The error of the metaphysic philosophy," he said, 

 "was the assumption that the great truths (or "major propo- 

 sitions") were already known by mankind, and that by the 

 proper use of the logical machine all minor truths could be 

 discovered and all errors eliminated from philosophy." On 

 the contrary: "It is found that in the course of the evolution 

 of mind minor propositions are discovered first, and major 

 propositions are reached only by the combination of minor 

 propositions ; that always in the search for truth the minor 

 proposition comes first, and that no major proposition can ever 

 be accepted until the minor propositions included therein have 

 been demonstrated. ... As the metaphysic methods of 

 reasoning were wrong, metaphysic philosophies were false; 

 the body of metaphysic philosophy is a phantasmagoria" (The 

 Philosophic Bearings of Darwinism, p. 6). 



During the earlier years in which these passages were writ- 

 ten, Powell's philosophical studies were subordinate to his 

 work in ethnology. In later years philosophy came to have a 

 more dominant interest, and at times so fully occupied his 

 thoughts that in a lecture of apparent ethnological content, as 

 indicated by its title, "Relation of primitive people to environ- 

 ment, illustrated by American examples" (Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution, Report 1895, pp. 625-637), he devoted a good share of 

 his hour to an abstract consideration of the difference between 

 "quality" and "property." It was in these later years that he 

 sought, as others had done before him, to establish a fully logi- 

 cal foundation for mechanics, and reached the conclusion that 

 motion, either molar or molecular, is constant in quantity, but 

 may be deflected in direction ; but his use of words in this con- 

 nection was sometimes such that it was not easy to follow his 

 meaning; he wrote, for example: "When motion becomes en- 

 ergy, then speed becomes inertia, and path becomes velocity ;" 

 and "When time becomes causation, then persistence becomes 



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