26 PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES ON 



undoubtedly, in the struggle, a truth has the advantage of ?iJiction 

 One has to be first, before he can think of making himself happy. 

 Science has for its main object to replace fiction by truth. 



Teach your children fiction, instead of truth, and in their 

 struggle with those who are armed with truth, they will jgo to the 

 wall. The " use of science '* in the coming struggle is, therefore, 

 not far to seek. 



One might naturally ask — what place has " speculation " in 

 science and philosophy ? 



Facts are such phenomena as present themselves crudely to our 

 senses. Speculation involves a mental process, resulting from the 

 crude impressions made on our brain by those facts. 



Probably the faets, with some exceptions, are pretty much the 

 same to all who can take notice of them. But speculation is a 

 reasoning, or drawing of conclusions from crude facts, and therefore 

 it is a process, which may be very different in different minds. 



Prof. Agassiz intimated that, in their studies in Germany, 

 he and his companion had to resist " the temptation to impose 

 one's own ideas upon nature to explain her mysteries by brilliant 

 theories, rather than by patient study of the facts as we find 

 them/'* 



This is, no doubt, sound advice, but every modern thinker will 

 say patiently study the facts as you see them, through your own 

 observations and those of others, and also theorize about them. 

 For as Weissman has rightly said — simple isolated facts lead 

 to nothing, unless they are bound together by a theory. It is this 

 that makes them valuable. In addition, it utilizes facts which are 

 loosely agglomerated round a speculation. A sound theory not 

 only throws light on the facts, but throws light ahead of the facts 

 already known. Just consider what light the Darwinian theory 

 has shed over every biological fact. Moreover sj^eculating, 

 theorizing, and philosophizing — different degrees of the same 

 mental action — are natural processes of the human mind. There 

 comes a time when, after a number of facts have been established, 

 the cultured mind evolves a theory by speculation, and eventually 

 by enlargement a philosophy is evolved, all which mental processes 

 are the outcome of thinking over the facts. 



♦ " Scientific Papers " of Asa Gray, by G. S. Sargent, vol. i?., p. 485. 



