RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT 



perfect number, it would be futile to search for other 

 planets. But even as he made this declaration an- 

 other planet was found. It would be safe to say that 

 no thinker of the present day would challenge defeat in 

 quite the Aristotelian or Hegelian manner; but, on the 

 other hand, it is equally little open to doubt that, in 

 matters slightly less susceptible of tangible demonstra- 

 tion, metaphysical conceptions still hold sway ; and as 

 regards the average minds of our time, it is perhaps 

 not an unfair estimate to say they surely have not ad- 

 vanced a jot beyond the Aristotelian stand -point. 

 Untrained through actual experience in any field of 

 inductive science, they remain easy victims of meta- 

 physical reasoning. Indeed, since the conditions of 

 civilization throw a protecting influence about us, and 

 make the civilized man less amenable to results of 

 illogical action than was the barbarian, it may almost 

 be questioned whether the average person of to-day is 

 the equal, as a scientific reasoner, of the average man 

 of the Stone Age. 



A few of the more tangible superstitions of primitive 

 man have been banished from even the popular mind 

 by the clear demonstration of science, but a host re- 

 mains. I venture to question whether, if the test could 

 be made in the case of ten thousand average persons 

 throughout Christendom, it would not be found that a 

 majority of these persons entertain more utterly mis- 

 taken metaphysical ideas regarding natural phenomena 

 than they do truly scientific conceptions. We pride 

 ourselves on the enlightenment of our age, but our 

 pride is largely based on an illusion. Mankind at large 

 is still in the dark age. The historian of the remote 



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