452 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 377. 



within his reach if he called them x, he 

 seems to me to be misled by words. 



As an explanation of the generation of 

 chicks from hens' eggs, the fantastic and 

 pantheistic animism of the passages I have 

 quoted is irrelevant and useless, and no 

 student of Berkeley's works, whether his 

 frame of mind be critical or responsive, 

 can confuse it with the sublime conviction 

 of this thinker that it is in one sustaining 

 mind that we and all things have being. 



12. Belief in the chasm may be due to 

 some error in the description of the way in 

 which we ftnd out things. 



There are no paradoxes nor contradic- 

 tions in nature. When facts seem to con- 

 tradict one another, better knowledge is 

 continually showing that some mistake has 

 been made. If physical science leads us, 

 or seems to lead us, to the belief that the 

 chasm between an egg and the thinking 

 man who comes out of an egg is intellec- 

 tually impassable, the embryologist must 

 ask where the mistake is. 



It is a hard thing to believe that, bene- 

 ficial and good as science has shown itself 

 to be, it can lead us into opinions which 

 cannot be maintained and made consistent. 

 Science is justified in her works, and I find 

 it hard to believe that the paradox of the 

 chasm can be due to the method in which 

 discoveries are made, or that this method 

 can involve us in contradictions, and lead 

 to intellectual disaster. 



On the other hand, it is not a hard thing 

 to believe that there may be some error or 

 omission in the account which successful 

 scientific investigators give of their meth- 

 od. He who reflects upon the perplexities 

 which come from the misuse of words will 

 find it an easy thing to believe that an ac- 

 count of the way in which things are 

 found out may be so imperfect that it is 

 practically equivalent to error, leading 

 those who try to find out things by follow- 

 ing it into contradiction and absurdity. It 



may be that the philosophical spokesmen 

 of science have been drawn into paradoxes 

 and contradictions and doubt of the plain- 

 est things, because they have mistaken some 

 crude and imperfect account of the way in 

 which we find out things for the way in 

 which we really do find out things. There 

 may be, in knowing, something so familiar 

 and obvious that it is commonly left out 

 of the description of the process of know- 

 ing. 



13. We are told that we know things 

 when we comprehend them, hut knowledge 

 may he comprehension and something 

 more. 



The eloquent plea for science, as a guide 

 to conduct, with which the author of a 

 new ' Grammar of Science ' begins his book, 

 must strike a responsive chord in the mind 

 of gvery student of nature. 



"Apart," he says, "from the increased 

 physical comfort, apart from the intellec- 

 tual enjoyment which modern science pro- 

 vides for the community, there is another 

 and more fundamental justification for the 

 time and material spent in scientific work. 

 From the standpoint of morality, we have 

 to judge of each human activity by its out- 

 come in conduct. ' ' 



Something in my own mind vibrated in 

 harmony Avith the author's words as I 

 read; but, as he is soon led, by his defini- 

 tion of science as the analysis and classifi- 

 cation of facts, to believe and to teach that 

 our conduct is nothing but a routine, over 

 which we have no real control, and for 

 which we have no true responsibility, his 

 premises seem to compel me to look at 

 his book from the standpoint of morality, 

 and to judge of his intellectual activity hy 

 its outcome in conduct. 



I am puzzled, in my attempt to do this, 

 by a moral question about the publication 

 and sale of this book. My difficulty is this. 

 The author's definition of science, as the 

 analysis and classification of facts, leads 



