1 88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



describing our knowledge of nature. But we should fall wofully short 

 were we to be satisfied with such an account of it. We can reach the 

 kernel of a more adequate account by way of that indispensable aid 

 to scientific discovery known as hypothesis-making. 



A few, only a few, men of science have proposed to eliminate 

 hypotheses from science altogether. The best known of these elimi- 

 nators is Wilhelm Ostwald. In the place of the hypothesis Ostwald 

 would install what he calls the-protothesis. And what is that? It 

 is a " vorlaufige Annahme." There you have it ! A protothesis is a 

 taking of something by running on ahead. Ostwald wants to get rid 

 of hypotheses altogether and rely wholly on " Arbeit/' on work, to make 

 conquests in science. But see what his proposal comes to, taking his 

 own words. He is going to do part of to-morrow's work to-day, even 

 at this very instant. The mind forecasts. It outstrips its past and 

 present experiences. That is the vital fact, and why quibble about 

 how it shall be named ? 



All generalization is hypothesis, says M. Poincare. Think about 

 it and you will see the eminent Frenchman is right. Think about it 

 further and you will see you can not move ahead in real science one 

 inch without generalization. But for it you might possibly have co- 

 ordinated experiences which by courtesy might be called knowledge. 

 But such knowledge would be wholly without motive, and what rational 

 being would care a snap for such knowledge ! 



We must not fail to notice how radically at variance this way of 

 interpreting the mind's work is from Kant's way of interpreting it. 

 Kantians speak of that which the " mind itself puts into nature." If 

 something is really put into nature, that something must have been 

 previously outside of nature. You can not put water into a dish that 

 is already in the dish. What is that outside something ? Where is the 

 outside source whence it comes? Ask the unfortunate mortals of 

 whom Laura Bridgman was an instance, who are deprived from tender 

 infancy of their sense organs, whether they know of some source of 

 knowledge wholly outside nature. These cases furnish indubitable 

 evidence, so far as they go, that consciousness has no content till sense 

 perception gives it some. 



No, the mind does not put something into nature that was pre- 

 viously outside it. This however, it does do : It takes something from 

 one part of nature and puts it into another part. We must allow that 

 the mind really does put something into any particular situation that 

 was not in that situation before. But that is quite different from 

 allowing that it puts something into nature as a whole that was not 

 before somewhere in nature as a whole. This brings us back to our 

 standardized, or tested, or relative reality. 



If we ask how or by virtue of what quality or force the mind does 

 this running ahead, this transferring of something from one part of 



