22 
MALLERY. 
from the particular to the general. The crudity of their con¬ 
ceptions was masked by the stucco of mystic and magnilo¬ 
quent words, which the elasticity of languages permitted, 
grammatic form and euphony being the only limitations. 
The success of this trick was old when Lucretius wrote— 
Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur, amantque, 
Inversis quae sub verbis latitantia cernunt; 
Yeraque constituunt quae belle tangere possunt 
Aures et lepido quae sunt fucata sonore. 
Which may be translated in lighter vein as— 
Fools love to puzzle with amaze 
On thoughts involved in mystic phrase; 
Their ears rejoice in words that tickle 
And take for gold the jingling nickel. 
This superannuated scholasticism has been generally called 
metaphysical from the order of Aristotle’s works, but is more 
properly antiphysical. Its combined stupidity and pretense 
have to some minds inflicted a stigma upon the title Philoso¬ 
phy, which. it arrogated. 
Modern reaction from the fetichistic worship of this mon¬ 
strous phantasm may have been too violent. A working 
hypothesis can be obtained a priori which, properly treated, 
shall not be fanciful delusion. Deduction need not be pre¬ 
tentious didaction. The old mischievous error was that 
deduction ascertained truth. Truths are supplied to the 
reservoir only by induction, but their useful flow with regu¬ 
lation into the best channels is by deduction. 
The terms science and knowledge are perhaps convert¬ 
ible in usage as in etymology, but neither of them is syno- 
nomic with Philosophy. Professor Mach defines knowl¬ 
edge as “ an expression of organic nature,” but that is not 
true unless, by his rather hazy term, he means the final and 
perfect knowledge which no one now pretends to have ac¬ 
quired, though nature in the abstract doubtless does com¬ 
prehend it. Claude Bernard is partly right in stating that 
Philosophy makes a specialty of generalizations. That, how¬ 
ever, is measurably true also, as before' stated, of each one of 
