354 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 
The primal motive of science is to regulate the con- 
duct of life. This is in a sense its ultimate end, for it 
is the first and the last function of the 
Primal motive — senses and the intellect. If science has 
of science. a é 
any message to man, It 1s expressed in 
these words of Huxley: “There can be no allevia- 
tion of the sufferings of mankind except in absolute 
veracity of thought and action and a 
Message of resolute facing of the world as it is.” 
eats “Still men and nations reap as the 
Pp y 
have strewn.” The history of human thought is filled 
with the rise of philosophic doctrines, laws, and gen- 
eralizations not drawn from human experience and not 
sanctioned by science. The attempt to use these ideas 
as a basis of human action has been one of the most 
fruitful sources of human misery. 
And now we may turn for a moment to the positive 
side of scientific belief. ; 
I was walking in the garden, not long ago, with a 
little girl, to whom I told James Whitcomb Riley’s story 
of the “gobelins that get you if you 
don’t watch out ”"—a story supposed to 
be peculiarly attractive to children. 
“But there isn’t any such thing as a 
goblin,” said the practical little girl, “and there isn’t 
ever going to be any such thing.” Mindful of the ar- 
guments of Berkeley and Balfour, I said to her in the 
spirit of philosophic doubt, “ Maybe there isn’t any such 
thing as anything, Barbara?”’ “ Yes, there is,” she said, 
and she looked about her for unquestioned reality; 
“there is such a thing as anything; there is such a thing 
as a squash!” 
And in this conclusion of the little girl the reality 
of the objective world, the integrity of science, and the 
sanity of man are alike bound up. And for its evidence, 
Philosophic 
doubt and 
common sense, 
