270 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 60. 



Often the eloquence of the dreamer has 

 even subverted the sanity of science, and 

 clear-headed, simple-minded scientific men 

 have been willing to affirm that science deals 

 with trivialities, and that only metaphysics 

 deals with the profound and significant 

 things of the universe. In a late great 

 text-book on physics, which is a science of 

 simple certitudes, it is affirmed: 



To us the question, Wliat is matter f — 

 What is, assuming it to have a real exist- 

 ence outside ourselves, the essential basis of 

 the phenomena with which we may as phy- 

 sicists make ourselves acquainted? — ap- 

 pears absolutely insoluble. Even if we be- 

 come perfectly and certainly acquainted 

 with the intimate structure of what we call 

 Matter, we would but have made a further 

 step in the study of its properties; and as 

 physicists we are forced to say that while 

 somewhat has been learned as to the prop- 

 erties of Matter, its essential nature is quite 

 unknown to us. 



As though its properties did not consti- 

 tute its essential nature. 



So, under the spell of metaphysics, the 

 physicist turns from his spectroscope to ex- 

 claim that all his researches may be deal- 

 ing with phantasms. 



Science deals with realities. These are 

 bodies with their properties. All the facts 

 embraced in this vast field of research are 

 expressed in terms of number, extension, 

 motion, duration and judgment; no other 

 terms are needed and no other terms are 

 coined, but by a process well known in 

 philology as a disease of language, some- 

 times these terms lapse into meanings which 

 connote illusions. The human intellect is 

 of such a nature that it has notions or ideas 

 which may be certitudes or illusions. All 

 the processes of reasoning, including sen- 

 sation and perception, proceed by infer- 

 ence; the inference may be correct or erro- 

 neous, and certitudes are reached by veri- 

 fying opinions. This is the sole and only 



process of gaining certitudes. The certi- 

 tudes are truths which properly represent 

 noumena, the illusions are errors which 

 misrepresent noumena. All knowledge is 

 the knowledge of noumena, and all illusion 

 is erroneous opinion about noumena. The 

 human mind knows nothing but realities 

 and deals with nothing but realities, but in 

 this dealing with the reaUties — the noumena 

 of the universe — it reaches some conclu- 

 sions that are correct and others that are 

 incorrect. The correct conclusions are cer- 

 titudes about realities; the incorrect conclu- 

 sions are illusions about realities. Science 

 is the name which mankind has agreed to 

 call this knowledge of realities, and error 

 is the name which mankind has agreed to 

 give to all illusions. Thus it is that certi- 

 tudes are directly founded upon realities; 

 and illusions as they are always about reali- 

 ties, are thus indirectly, though incorrectly, 

 founded upon realities, but certitudes and 

 illusions alike all refer to realities. In this 

 sense then it may be stated that all error as 

 well as knowledge testifies to reality, and 

 that all our knowledge is certitude based 

 upon realitj^, and that illusions would not 

 be possible were there not realities about 

 which inferences are made. 



Known realities are those about which 

 mankind has knowledge; unknown things 

 are those things about which man has not yet 

 attained knowledge. Scientific research is 

 the endeavor to increase knowledge, and its 

 methods are observation, experience and 

 verification. Illusions are erroneous infer- 

 ences in relation to known things. All 

 certitudes are described in terms of num- 

 ber, extension, motion, duration and judg- 

 ment; nothing else has yet been discovered 

 and nothing else can be discovered with 

 the faculties with which man is possessed. 



In the material world we have no knowl- 

 edge of something which is not a unity of 

 itself or a unity of a plurality; of something 

 which is not an extension of figure or an 



