16 MODERN SCIENCE: 



In thus stripping or abstracting the great mass of its attributes from our 

 object, and leaving only a few, which it combines into a concept, the 

 mind practically abandons the real article and takes up with a shadow ; 

 but in return for this it gets something which it can handle, which is light 

 to carry about, and which like paper money, for the time and under certain 

 conditions does really represent value. The only danger is lest it the 

 mind carried away by the extensive applicability of the partial concept 

 which it has thus formed, should credit it with an actual value should 

 project it on the background of the external world and ascribe to it that 

 reality which belongs only to objects themselves, i.e., to things embody- 

 ing an infinite range of attributes. 



The peculiar method of Science is now clear to us, and can be abun- 

 dantly illustrated from modern results. Our experience consists in sensa- 

 tions, we feel the weight of heavy bodies, we see them fall when let go, 

 we have sensations of heat and cold, light and darkness, and so forth. 

 But these sensations are more or less local and variable from man to man, 

 and we naturally seek to find some common measure of them, by which 

 we can talk about and describe them exactly, and independently of the 

 peculiarities of individual observers. Thus we seek to find some common 

 phenomenon which underlies (as we say) the sensations of heat and cold, 

 or of light and darkness, or something which explains (i.e., is always 

 present in) the case of falling bodies and to do this we adopt the method 

 of generalisation above described, i.e., we observe a great number of 

 individual cases and then see what qualities or attributes they have in 

 common. So far good. But it is just here that the fallacy of the ordi- 

 nary scientific procedure comes in ; for, forgetting that these common 

 qualities are mere abstractions from the real phenomena we credit them 

 with a real existence, and regard the actual phenomena as secondary 

 results, "effects " or what-not of these " causes." This in plain language 

 is putting the cart before the horse or rather the shadow before the man. 

 Thus finding that a vast number of variously shaped and colored bodies 

 tend to fall towards the earth, we erect this common attribute of falling 

 into an independent existence which we call "attraction" or "gravita- 

 tion " and ultimately posit a universal gravitation acting on all bodies 

 in Nature ! or finding that a number of different substances, such as 

 water, air, wood, &c., convey to us the sensation we call sound, and that 

 in all these cases the common element is vibration, we detach the attri- 

 bute vibration, credit it with a separate existence, and speak of it as the 

 cause of sound. But though we may thus think of the shadow as separate 

 from the man, the shadow cannot be separate from the man ; and tho' we 

 may try to think of the falling or the vibration as separate from the wood 

 or the stone, such falling and vibration cannot exist apart from these and 

 other such materials, and the effort to speak of it as so existing ends in 

 mere nonsense. More strange still is the fatuity, when, as in the case of 

 the undulatory Theory of light or the Atomic theory of physics, the con- 



