HHIBBi
' . .
JJCSB LIBRARY ,
American Mature
Group VI. The Philosophy of Nature. Edited by V. L. Kellogg
THE
STABILITY OF TRUTH
A DISCUSSION OF REALITY AS RELATED
TO THOUGHT AND ACTION
President of Stanford University
" Veritatis laus omnis in actione consistit." CICERO
" Al frier de los huevos; se vera." CERVANTES
COPYRIGHT, 1911,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
Published, January, 1911
THE CUINN BODEN CO. PRESS
EDITOR'S PREFACE
THE generalizations and principles of science, the
significance of scientific facts, the consequences of
recognizing and adopting in our daily life the knowl-
edge of science: these are the subjects of this series
of books, to be called the Philosophy of Nature
Series.
The science which will be most in evidence in
these books is the science of living things, biology.
And it is the application of the scientific knowledge
of living things in general to the conduct of human
life in particular which will be the subject most
conspicuous in the list of titles of the books of the
series.
This first book, then, a robust treatment of sci-
ence in life, by a robust exponent of the life scien-
tific, should be a most excellent introduction to the
Series.
V. L. K.
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
April, 1911
PREFACE
THIS little book represents the substance of a
course of lectures delivered on the John Calvin
McNair Foundation, in the University of North
Carolina, at Chapel Hill, in January, 1910, at the
invitation of President Francis P. Venable. By
the provisions of the will of Mr. McNair, fifty years
ago, the University authorities were directed, from
time to time, to " employ some able scientific gen-
tleman to deliver before the students then in at-
tendance at the University a course of lectures, the
object of which lectures shall be to show the mu-
tual bearing of science and theology upon each
other, and to prove the existence (so far as may
be) of God from Nature." This book treats es-
pecially of the relation of realities to human ex-
perience and to human conduct.
The writer is under special obligations to his
colleague, Professor Henry Waldgrave Stuart, for
trenchant criticisms, by which he has tried to
profit.
D. S. J.
Stanford University, California,
November 16, 1910.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. REALITY AND SCIENCE 3
II. REALITY AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 47
III. REALITY AND MONISM 65
IV. REALITY AND ILLUSION 95
V. REALITY AND EDUCATION 143
VI. REALITY AND TRADITION 161
INDEX 177
THE STABILITY OF TRUTH
REALITY AND SCIENCE
" Nous sommes des hommes et non pas des dieux ; nous ne
savons le tout de rien, mais nous savons quelque chose.
C'est peu, sans doute, mais ce peu suffit." GEORGE FONSEGRIVE.
I ONCE walked in a garden with a little girl, to
whom I told James Whitcomb Riley's story of
the " goblins that get you if you don't watch out,"
an uncanny freak of the imagination supposed to be
especially 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." In a spirit of philosophic doubt I said to
her, " Maybe there isn't any such a thing as any-
thing."
" Yes, there is," she said, as she looked about the
garden for unquestioned reality. " Yes, 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, the
sanity of man are alike bound up. The distinction
between objective and subjective, between reality of
perception and illusion of nerve disorder, between
3
4 Reality and Science
fact and dream, between presence and memory, is
fundamental in human psychology is essential in
human conduct.
The purpose of this book is to set forth the
doctrine that the final test of truth is found in trust-
ing our lives to it. Truth is livable, while error is
not, and the difference appears through the strain of
the conduct of life. Science is human experience
tested and set in order. The primal impulse as well
as the final purpose of science is the conduct of life.
It is held that science cannot grasp ultimate truths,
that is, it cannot grasp any truth in final or absolute
completeness. But science may grasp certain rela-
tions of truth and certain phases of reality and may
state these in terms of previous human experience.
Such versions or transcripts of reality are truth, and
they represent actual verity so far as they go.
Incidentally it is held that pure science cannot be
separated from applied science, or knowledge in ac-
tion, in which science finds its verification; that
philosophy is an outgrowth of science the logic or
mathematics of human experience, and, finally, that
in all matters concerning human conduct science fur-
nishes the final guide, or, at least, that any guide to
thought and action which has proved to be safe be-
comes by that fact a part of science. Right action
is the final purpose of science, and in like fashion
and in the same degree the acquisition of truth is the
crowning glory of human endeavor.
It is claimed that there exists a parallelism or cor-
Reality and Science 5
relation between the actual character of objects in
nature, and the impressions these objects make on
the nervous system of man and of other animals.
The impression is not the object, and it is the im-
pression, not the thing itself, which man sees or
feels, but object and impression run the same course.
The one is the inevitable effect of the other, as im-
pressed on human consciousness.
The term reality is used in psychology to desig-
nate impressions made on the mind or on the nerve
center by the impact of an external stimulus. A
reality in the mind has its origin in an actual object
or influence outside the nerve center or sensorium
receiving it. It is an objective impression as dis-
tinguished from a subjective condition. Subjective
impressions, that is, appearance of reality seen by
the " mind's eye " only, may be illusions. An illu-
sion is at bottom usually a fading memory. It is a
continuance of a reality in the nerve center, after
the source of the reality has passed away. An in-
correct interpretation of an actual reality is known
as a delusion.
Illusions aside, the normal impression made by a
normal stimulus on a normal mind is a reality. A
reality within measures a truth outside.
The degree of correspondence or of correlation
between a reality of our minds and the actualities
of the thing in itself (" das Ding an sich," whatever
that may be) is our measure of truth. That our
" realities " or impressions of external things have
6 Reality and Science
a degree of objective truth is shown by their co-
incidence with impressions derived second-hand
from scientific instruments of precision. Thus the
camera, a chemico-mechanical eye, devised by man,
reproduces forms as shown by reflection of light.
From the photograph properly adjusted we can re-
ceive nerve impressions or new realities virtually
identical with those we derive from the thing by it-
self. In the same fashion the phonograph, a me-
chanical ear, records sound vibrations just as the
ear does. These vibrations given out second-hand
are indistinguishable from the original, except
through the imperfection of the materials used in
recording, as compared with the ear-drum itself.
These instruments show not only that the objects
about us maintain a constancy of behavior in rela-
tion to us and to our mechanical devices, but that
they influence our devices in some degree in the same
fashion in which they influence us. The common
element in these processes is an element of actual
truth. When a truth is segregated as a proposition
it must be stated in terms of human experience. It
is often claimed that the real nature of the thing in
itself is so distant from our experiences, so abso-
lutely inscrutable, incomprehensible, and unknow-
able, that we can have no truth whatever in regard
to it. All we have is our impression of certain ef-
fects on our consciousness. We assume, without
real proof, it is said, that our various sensations
are transcripts of any actuality whatever, and,
Reality and Science 7
furthermore, that we do not know that our sense-
impressions accord in any degree with impressions
which may be made on other types of consciousness.
It is further asserted that our own sense-impressions,
whatever they may be, are in every case vitiated (or
vitalized) by personal and individual habits of in-
ference and reasoning. All these qualities of per-
sonality, it is claimed, lead us, if possible, still
further from the actual character of the actual
thing in itself.
The answer to this is found in that fact that
men and animals are guided by their realities.
They live by truth. That they move safely implies
safe guidance, the power to " size up the situation "
about them with substantial accuracy, so far as it
concerns themselves. Were it not for this power
the race of men could never have maintained itself.
^ The sense-organs of every animal are so constructed
that its realities are adequate to its needs. The need
is not that of a " copy or transcript of nature, but ac-
curacy as prompting fruitful attack or exploitation."
For the truth in dealing with external things is not
primarily knowledge of the things themselves, but
rather of their relation to each other and to us. Ef-
fective action depends on ability to " size up a situ-
ation." It is the situation or correlation of objects
which impresses us rather than the things in them-
selves.
The nervous system arose, in the first place, as a
necessity in relation to the power of locomotion.
8 Reality^ and Science
To move from place to place makes direction of mo-
tion a vital need. This direction is given through
the nervous system. The most distinctive trait of
the animal kingdom is its power to move. Its most
distinctive group of organs is the nerve-system. The
functions of the nervous system collectively consti-
tute the Mind, using that term in the large sense.
If animals are to move about, they must move
about safely and surely. Their senses give safety,
for they give truth ; not absolute nor ultimate truth,
nor truth of some unknown category, but such de-
gree of reality as is necessary for the preservation
and development of life.
Humanly speaking, and there is no other way for
us to try to speak, there is no absolute truth. That
is, we have no truth that is true from all standpoints
at once, nor from a general standpoint at large, a
standpoint which is not that of any particular per-
son, place, or time. That which I now hold to be
true about any given thing does not pretend to be a
full copy of reality, nor to be logically harmonizable
with all truth, present or to come. It claims, or I
may claim for it, that if, as I understand it, it be
acted upon, it will be followed by the results which
I expect. To say that a certain proposition is true
to me does not affirm that it is true from an
imaginary standpoint of absolute truth, nor does it
involve an imaginary or absolute completeness of
knowledge.
In the human race more truth is demanded than
Reality and Science 9
with the lower animals, because man's powers of
motion and locomotion are far more diversified.
Man needs truth better defined as well as truths of
a higher order than those which suffice for the needs
of other animals. These new truths must answer to
the new interests expressed through his more varied
powers of action. He must have more wide-reach-
ing correspondence between his impressions of the
environment and the environment itself as it exists
in relation to him. These impressions and conjec-
tures, the collective experience of many men tested
and set in order, constitute science. With the ad-
vance of science man has invented an immense vari-
ety of devices, instruments of precision, by which
impressions too subtle for the ordinary senses may,
with relative accuracy, be also tested, measured, and
set in order. It is by means of experience, personal
and collective, that the human race maintains itself
on the earth. The experience concerns itself chiefly
with the relations of objects, rather than with their
ultimate constitution or their intimate nature. It
gives the truth actually needed in actual life, and it
furnishes the means for the acquisition of more com-
plete conceptions whenever in the intricacies of life
such better knowledge is needed. That we do not
know the chemical composition of a rock or a jewel
in no wise prevents us from using the one as a
weapon, the other as an ornament. If we are
dealing with an object as such, a drug or an ore,
for example, the chemical composition may be all-
io Reality and Science
important. The experience of the race gives us the
means of finding out this composition. But the fact
that we may not know the chemical composition of a
rock does not in any degree darken or impeach such
knowledge of it as we already have. It does not
challenge its fitness for the particular use for which
we have chosen it. The fact that we have no abso-
lutely complete knowledge of anything does not
demonstrate the unreality of external things. It
does not even throw doubt on any part of the actual
knowledge we possess. We may see one side of a
mountain peak. We may become familiar with its
ridges and valleys and all the details of its surface
without knowing what minerals may be concealed
within, or what forms the other side of the peak
may assume. We may not know whether it is
really a peak or the end of a long ridge. And the
acquisition of this additional knowledge would give
us no clearer vision of the part we see. Conversely,
the absence of further knowledge does not darken
the actual outlook. We know what we know; it is
truth so far as it goes. We may safely trust it so
far as our knowledge reaches. The knowledge we
possess is not knowledge of the object " at large,"
but of the object in its relations to us.
Our view of the mountain may be wholly ade-
quate if we mean merely to climb its side. If we
wish to exploit its recesses for gold ore, we must
seek further truth, and by the recognized processes
of science. We must have had experience with the
Reality and Science 11
indications of gold deposits, or we must seek the
services of some one who has had or has collated
the results of such experience.
The power to sum up the truth arising from
ordinary sense-impressions derived from realities
we call common sense. Science involves common
sense, but its operations are continued beyond the
obvious into the hidden complexities of truth. By
a knowledge of these complexities endeavors sim-
ilarly complex may be carried out with success. Such
success, other things being equal, is in proportion
to the exactness of our knowledge, the degree in
which our conceptions are transcripts of reality, and
the courage with which we use our knowledge in
our actual operations.
The final test of truth is, then, its " livableness,"
the degree to which we may trust our lives to it.
Just as we may trust our lives so can we trust that
for which life is valuable, our aims, purposes, and
hopes singly, one by one, or grouped together in sys-
tems. Livableness seems to represent our final test
rather than " workableness," the word more often
used in this connection. An idea may be " work-
able " because the people concerned are willing to
try to use it in their work. That people are willing
to accept it as a basis for action is not proof that
the conception itself is true. That one man or ten
thousand or ten million men find a dogma acceptable
does not argue for its soundness unless these men
have one and all successfully translated it into ac-
12 Reality and Science
tion. If it cannot be tested by action in some
fashion or other, it is not a truth. A truth, to be
our truth, must have some relation to experiment,
some relevance in human affairs. A vast propor-
tion, probably a majority of the Aryan race, accepts
the doctrine of Reincarnation. It is a doctrine
which can in no way be tested by action or worked
out in terms of endeavor. In so far as science or co-
ordinated human experience can touch it, it can make
no use of it. That you or I or a hundred millions
of men in India find it satisfying or acceptable or
apparently " workable " is no argument in its favor.
It has no standing in the court of realities, as it
rests on no phase of human experience.
If a doctrine is livable we can trust our lives to it.
This involves the idea of personal safety or of race
security. It may not be at once applied to any given
proposition. It may be applied to the process by
which our knowledge is gained, as well as to the
proposition itself. This is the final test, the test of
the long run, for no doctrine can find its full test
in the lifetime of an individual. If it is true, one
man, or generation of men, can depend upon it, or
upon the methods by which the doctrine is developed.
We do not yet know what electricity really is. We
have large experience in what it will do, and in
the changing relations of objects produced by
changes in electrical conditions. This knowledge
tested and set in order constitutes electrical science.
To this we trust our lives every day, those of us
Reality and Science 13
who travel by rail at the mercy of the block system
and the train despatches If this knowledge were
not true so far as it goes, and so far as it concerns
us, the error involved in it would prove fatal, not at
once necessarily, nor to all of us, but in the long
run to the race, to all who trust to the methods by
which this knowledge was obtained. This error
might not involve actual race extinction, at least not
within an appreciable time. But it would involve
destruction in proportion to the importance of the
error. For the rest we might expect that life would
be on a lower plane than would be possible with
more exact knowledge and the courage and intellect
to make use of it.
In no field has science yet reached finality. It sees
some things very clearly, but the unknown lies about
on every side, a trackless wilderness yet to be cleared
and fitted for human habitation.
To some philosophers, this vastness of the un-
known is a matter for despair rather than hope.
There is so much unknown, so much outside of
human experience, that our acquisition and en-
deavor count as next to nothing, while for ultimate
truth of any sort we must appeal to some other
source of knowledge. It is claimed that our sense-
impressions, the realities of psychology, are in-
infinitely removed from the actuality of the thing
in itself. Being infinitely remote, they give us no
conception of any real thing. At the most, and
that is not much, we have only impression of rela-
14 Reality and Science
tions, perception of changes, the flight of shadows in
environment, and that therefore, from fact and na-
ture, " we know not anything," " we only trust,"
and, so far as the external world is concerned, we
must let it go at that. Only the seer can know the
truth, and for this he must look within, and within
only.
To this we oppose our robust common sense, the
everyday experience of any man who tries to do
anything. He finds his efforts effective in propor-
tion to his own trust in realities, and in proportion
to his own efforts to make use of the experience of
his race. Knowledge is power. That is, knowl-
edge enables effort to become effectiveness. We may
know but little, but that little may be exact. The
safety and the success of our efforts attest the clear-
ness of our knowledge, so far as it goes.
An apple is a very familiar object. It is one
of the things which we know with considerable ac-
curacy and fullness of detail. That is what we mean
by calling it familiar. Much effort has been ex-
pended to find out what constitutes the apple after
we have, in our minds, removed all its attributes.
What is left after the redness, sourness, size, weight,
substance of the apple have one by one been taken
away? Naturally only the apple is left. But what
is the apple without these attributes? Only the at-
tributes appeal to normal human experience. The
apple in itself is nothing more than these experi-
ences, with the addition of possible appeals to other
Reality and Science 15
experiences less tangible than these. We can never
know the complete truth about the apple, but what
we do know may be just as real, just as true, as
though we knew it all. It is the truth as far as it
goes, and the truth, man-truth, in our possession,
is just as true as though it were God's truth, which,
indeed, it is as well.
Our sense of vision shows us the moon. We
recognize its form, the N outlines of its shadowed
districts, its luster as illumined by the sun. All this
is true so far as it goes, just as true as though we
were able to touch it, to see its hidden further
hemisphere, or to look down into the craters of its
volcanoes. To do these things would add knowl-
edge. It would not change its nature. What we
have is truth ; the rest is merely the truth we do not
have, and which, may be, we do not want. Too
much truth, more than we can assimilate, may con-
fuse action or render it abortive. We cannot use
truth much before we are to ask for it. To utilize
it we must assimilate it with the truth already held.
We must conceive it in terms of our experience.
With scientific methods, tested and verified by human
experience, we may determine the size of the moon,
knowing the length of two sides and the size of the
included angle. Or, knowing two angles and the
length of the included side, we may determine its
distance from the earth. Or, with the instruments
of science, we may gaze into its craters and calculate
the height of its crests from the shadows thrown
16 Reality and Science
by the sunlight which strikes them on the edge.
All this and everything else which the astronomer
can teach of moon and star, so long as it rests on
human experience and is adequately tested and set
in order, is truth. It is not the whole truth, for
human experience works at long range, with the
smallest as well as the greatest of objects, but it is
truth so far as it goes. Each truth we attain sug-
gests the existence of other truths, more or less
susceptible of being tested. There are always
groups of realities not perfectly defined. Such
truths may belong to that fringe or penumbra of
science in which science merges into philosophy.
The men who do things have known what they
are doing. Men must have sized up a complex situ-
ation pretty well to have laid the Atlantic cable, to
have painted the " Last Supper," to have drawn up
the Declaration of Independence, to have spoken the
" Lord's Prayer." The chemist-biologist, with the
infinitely little, or the astronomer, with the infinitely
vast, the engineer, with his forces and resistances,
the statesman, with his millions of individual units;
all these are in a degree masters of their environ-
ment, else they could not be masterful in dealing
with it. Science is power, because power depends
on knowledge. But science is power to the degree
that it is truth, to the extent that it represents an ef-
fective co-ordination of the results of genuine
human experience.
The present writer just now is dealing, or thinks
Reality and Science 17
that he is dealing, with the statutes which govern
fishing in the international boundary waters of the
United States and Canada. He thinks that it is true
that he exists ("I think, therefore I am"), and
that he is the representative in this matter of eighty
millions or more of similar individuals or mental
and physical units, in a nation called the United
States. He has never counted these units, but he
thinks that he has met many of them, and he takes
the work of some of them, as recorded by printed
signs, for the rest. As to the nation called the
United States, he thinks that he has seen much of it,
and that he can imagine the rest. The parts of it as
seen by his neighbors seem to impress them much
as they do him. For all practical purposes he finds
he can trust their statements. It is workable to do
so. Or, at least, it seems to seem so to him. He
thinks that he has traveled the long extent of this
long boundary, and all the way he thinks he finds
people whose impression of every detail coincides, so
far as he can determine, substantially with his own.
He can guide himself along the road by the maps
they have published. He can time himself by the
time-tables of their railways and steamships, and he
veritably believes that his ideas of these railways
and steamships, being substantially those of their
builders, are fairly near the truth. He does not see
how, for any practical purpose, any one could get
from these machines any important truth which was
unknown to the men who planned and built them.
1 8 Reality and Science
In like fashion he thinks that he knows that the
Great Lakes exist, that Lake Superior is the largest
and Lake Erie the richest in life. He thinks that
he knows something of why this is so. He deals
with what he and most men regard as fishes, useful
to man because men suppose that they can use them
as food. These fishes have each individually an ana-
tomical structure, with what seems to be complex
physiological action. Of these fishes he thinks, and
his associates agree with him, there are many kinds
in these lakes, those of each kind varying some-
what, but substantially alike, and those of all the
kinds having much in common also, but separated
by differences of varying grade. With all this, he
has to deal, or thinks he does, with corporations and
fishermen, with canoes and steamtugs, with nets and
hooks, with cities and forests, with seasons and tem-
peratures and rocks and ice and mud and gravel,
with swift current and slack water, with custom
and statute, with law and prejudice, with warden
and marshal, inspector and policeman, with human
tendencies to honesty and fair play, and human
tendencies to treachery and deceit. Furthermore,
he has, or thinks he has, the temerity, with his Brit-
ish colleague, to reduce all this to order by means
of sixty-six regulations or statutes, to be enforced
by certain governmental methods, with a reasonable
prospect that these statutes may satisfy fishes and
fishermen and all else concerned.
The point of all this is that if there were not
Reality and Science 19
real truth involved in these matters, this work could
not be done. Not necessarily the whole truth re-
garding any individual object, but the essential
truth in regard to its reciprocal relations and its re-
lations to me. I have to " size up the situation "
correctly so far as the process goes, though I may
not try to complete the truth as regards a man, a
fish, or a nation, a gasolene-launch, or anything in
itself. But if, after doing this work, one came no
nearer to the thing in itself than the man who never
heard of the Great Lakes, and could not tell a net
from a sonnet, then we should be forced to admit
that psychological realities do not parallel truth nor
copy it, nor transcribe it, nor approximate it, nor
have anything to do with it. The test in this case
is for some one to try it. Similar experiments have
been tried millions of times. There is always the
one answer. Knowledge is power. Power is the
evidence that our belief is knowledge. Efficiency
in all things is the resultant of knowledge and
training, with the addition of the motive attribute
of courage. Knowledge is significant or livable
truth. It is in working relations with reality. It
has " an effective purchase upon reality," whatever
that may be. In proportion as it is effective in en-
deavor, our impression of anything about us bears
a definite relation to the real nature of the thing in
itself.
Knowledge in turn is verified by action. Using
the Boundary fisheries again as an illustration we
2O Reality and Science
may make this statement. To deny the effective co-
incidence of my mind-pictures with the facts con-
cerned, would be to assert that as a dream-picture
my mind had been able to frame the Great Lakes,
the science of ichthyology, the art of fish culture,
the idea of law, the geography of Canada and the
United States, with the history of both and all other
nations. Theodore Roosevelt and Edward VII fig-
ure in the accompanying warrants and documents,
and if these are not real in this sense, they are equally
unreal in any other, for I have only the same type
of sense-evidence in either case. Besides, it is a
well-attested fact of psychology that dream-pictures
or subjective impressions are only memory duplica-
tions of past realities. Nothing originates de novo
in the land of dreams. There is no initiative in
subjective imaginations. Such originality as these
seem to show, is due to their interconfusion or tele-
scoping. The materials are never new. They are
shadows from the past, not beginnings of the future.
Another conceivable point of view would be that
instead of having imagined the Great Lakes and
the boundary problems from Grand Manan to Ta-
toosh Light, I had merely imagined that I imagined
them. But on this assumption my existence as an
Ego and my ability to know, to remember or
imagine, would be at the same time impeached.
The only tenable theory is to suppose that a reality
in the mind matches a reality in the Universe. This
reality may match the actuality as a photograph
Reality and Science 21
matches a face, or else as a key matches a lock. The
two may be identical, or they may be adjustable the
one to the other. Perhaps we do not know which
of these two illustrations comes nearest the truth,
but some form of workable correspondence is cer-
tainly there. In either case, the degree of such
matching is measured by livability. By such tests,
the methods of science and the conclusions of sci-
ence carry us progressively nearer to truth. We
do not attain, by its tests, to absolute truth, what-
ever that may be, but the truth involved in clear
perception of relations among its constituent ele-
ments. Incomplete truth, more or less faulty, is the
beginning of new truth, and this again is a starting-
point for action.
The final test of error must be found in its effect
on human life. Falsehood must kill outright if we
trust our life wholly to it. It will thwart and dis-
appoint us in the degree in which we rest upon it our
hope or endeavor. When a proposition is found to
be " workable," it is not of necessity completely true,
but only in so far as we find that it will work. The
truth in any doctrine is not the whole of it, nor in
general that part which is deemed essential by its
upholders. In the methods of science lie our sole
means of separating truth from error, and of identi-
fying the relations of cause and effect on which
actual livableness must depend.
Ninety-nine per cent, of a doctrine or a dogma
may be absolutely false, and yet the whole may be
22 Reality and Science
for a time livable, and therefore to the same ex-
tent true. Many a great movement has lived
through the single unnoticed germ of truth, en-
veloped in shining robes of error. In the body of
doctrines recently brought together under the name
of Christian Science, there is much that is workable,
else it would not work ; much that is livable, else its
followers would not live. Neurotic weakness finds
a balm in turning from its own troubles and limita-
tions. In a degree, it is our privilege to heal our-
selves by changing our own mental attitude, the
cause of our trouble remaining unchanged. But all
this, admitting its accuracy, does not render valid
the philosophic principle on which these doctrines are
alleged to rest, namely, that external things which
may cause, or seem to cause, illness, harm, or misery,
have no real existence. It does not, for example,
tend to prove the claim that " cutting the jugular
vein will not cause death, because there is no jugular
vein." It does not show that contagious diseases
associated with the presence of micro-organisms
have no real existence, but are mere phantasms of
unwholesome " mortal mind."
The scanty records of the words of Jesus recorded
in the four Gospels have furnished the living inspi-
ration of a hundred churches of a thousand creeds.
And these have justified themselves by the truth
that is in them, not by the forms and ceremonies,
the pomp and circumstance, by which this truth has
been obscured and confused. When the truth is
Reality and Science 23
grasped and woven into action, the rest is valueless,
however imposing in the eyes of the world. In the
conduct of life, only truth survives.
An error may be harmless if we do not act upon
it. Our everyday judgments of immaterial things
are constantly hazy with misconceptions. The real
nature of an object concerns us very little if it does
npt control our action. The things we see may be a
squash or a goblin, a granite bowlder, or a whiff
of vapor; it is all the same to us if we let it alone.
The moment we enter into relations with it, its real
nature becomes a vital matter. If it be a squash or
a bowlder in one relation, then bowlder or squash
it is in all its relations. If we view the squash as
something essentially different from what it is,
as, for example, the head of a phantom horseman,
the error involved may extend to other relations in
life. If we do not recognize the truth in things
which are nearest, we shall be deceived in remoter
things. We shall see portents in comets, and shall
overlook the reasons for sanitation. Poisons will
seem as foods, and foods as poisons. The whole
accuracy and sanity of life becomes impaired. Se-
curity of action is always conditioned on the preci-
sion with which we size up our relation to external
things, and on the correctness with which we rea-
son from the evidence of our senses.
Science is the gathered wisdom of the human race
in regard to sense-perceptions. It is collective, not
individual. Only a part of it can be grasped by
24 Reality and Science
any one man. The individual can be imbued more or
less with its spirit, and can add his own experience
to the mass. At the most, this single addition can
be but little, and in but few directions. Only a
fraction of possible knowledge can come to all
men. But the little that an individual man can
really know is true as far as it goes. It is as true as
the truest thing in the universe. The more this
truth enters into the conduct of life, the greater the
need for more truth. The same conduct of life de-
mands greater and greater wisdom. Wisdom, as I
have elsewhere said, is knowing what one ought to
do next. Virtue is doing it. Wisdom and virtue
react on each other, and each one creates a greater
demand for the 'other, a greater demand for truth in
knowledge and for truth in action.
Religion is fundamentally the warrant for wisdom
and for virtue. There must be some reason why
the thing to be done next should be attempted rather
than something else. Every form of religion the
world has known has addressed itself in some
fashion to this problem. As those lines of conduct
which make for life and strength have in them the
elements of survival, so the religions of the world
have in the main cast their might on the side of
righteousness. This much of truth they have had,
that continued leadership implies a degree of wis-
dom, and wisdom rests on a workable knowledge of
realities.
As existence grows more complex, the more in-
Reality and Science 25
sistent is the need of greater precision in our knowl-
edge of ourselves and of the material world in which
we move, as well as of invisible forces and tendencies
by which the various elements in our universe are
related.
The greater our effort, the more insistent become
the limiting conditions. One element of power is
to know its limitations. The exercise of power de-
mands constantly new accessions of truth as to our
environment, and more exact definitions of the
truth already partly gained.
" True ideas," William James tells us, " are those
that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and
verify. False ideas are those that we cannot."
" Truth lives, in fact, for the most part, on a credit
system. Our thoughts and beliefs ' pass ' so long
as nothing challenges them, just as banknotes pass
so long as nobody refuses them. But this all points
to direct, face-to- face verifications somewhere, with-
out which the fabric of truth collapses like a financial
system with no cash basis whatever. You accept
my verification of one thing, I yours of another.
We trade on each other's truth. But beliefs, veri-
fied concretely by somebody, are the posts of the
whole superstructure." Our expression of these
laws is, as Professor James observes, not absolutely
a transcript of reality, but a convenient summary of
old facts which may lead us to new ones. Our
theories are " only a man-made language, a concep-
tual shorthand, as some one calls them, in which we
26 Reality and Science
write our reports of nature, and languages, as is
well known, tolerate much choice of expression and
many dialects."
Truth gives safety. Whether it gives us rest or
comfort or satisfaction depends on other matters.
That an idea is agreeable, is no evidence as to its
truth. Truth is under no obligation to be palatable.
We may again refer to the claim that the methods
of science do not and cannot give us absolute truth.
This is, of course, true. Our record of truth is in
human experience, and this record is again a re-
sponse to something real and actual outside our-
selves. The record is within us; the impact comes
from without. Balfour tells us that the claim that
we may " trust in the infallibility of scientific proc-
esses has no higher authority than the claim of in-
fallibility made at times by certain religious organi-
zations. As only the senses and the reason can be
appealed to in support of the claim of senses and
reason, the argument of science is of necessity rea-
soning in a circle." For these reasons, it is claimed
that the conclusions of science should take a sub-
ordinate place, as against the absolute truth derived
from the innate ideas which rise spontaneously in
the human mind.
But we have no certain knowledge of any " in-
nate ideas," which are not themselves derived from
any form of human experience. I am sure that I
never possessed any. When a religious sentimental-
ist came to Martin Luther with the claim that he
Reality and Science 27
was guided to the truth by an " Innern Geist " or
spirit, Luther replied bluntly, " Ihren Geist haue Ich
ueber die Schnautze " " I slap your spirit on the
snout." More politely, perhaps, but quite as firmly,
the modern psychologist refuses to consider any
purely subjective experience as the source of valid
truth.
Innate impulses exist, numerous and complex, but
an impulse or tendency to action is not an idea.
These are not statements of fact, but formless calls
for action. So far as we understand these matters,
innate impulses are survivals of primitive tendencies,
" inarticulate demands for fact " inherited from
generation to generation, because they have proved
serviceable as calls to the vital deeds of life. Such
impulses spurred our ancestors to necessary acts.
Self-defense, hunger, and reproduction, these fur-
nish the source of the primitive motives. Like
other forms of instinct, these impulses do not point
forward to truth, but backward toward necessity.
Their origin is in a past need. Their survival proves
their utility.
It is, of course, true that human experience is
never actually and purely objective. It is colored
by the medium through which it passes. This me-
dium varies with the infinite variety of man. " My
mind to me a kingdom is," and whatever enters that
kingdom must take its hue from its surroundings.
We may farther acknowledge that each of the
senses is subject to illusions of its own, to failure to
28 Reality and Science
represent phases of reality. The sensation must
also run the gauntlet of delusion, the failure on the
part of the brain or the mind or the consciousness
to interpret truthfully what the sense-organs faith-
fully represent. When we pass beyond the usual
range of experience, such failure is the general rule
rather than the exception; while inside the range of
experience, memory-pictures or traces of past im-
pressions often mingle with present realities to the
confusion of subjective truth. Thus, as Balfour ob-
serves, life is at best " in a dimly-lighted room."
All the objects about us are in some respects quite
different from what they seem. Their content as a
final whole is unknown, and, perhaps, unknowable.
We have no means of recognizing all possible phases
of reality. The electric condition of an object may
be as real as its color or its temperature, yet none
of our senses respond to ordinary variations in elec-
trical conditions. Our eyes give but an octave of
the vibrations we call light, and our ears are dull to
all but a narrow range in pitch of sound.
But here again, what we have is truth so far as it
goes. If in a dimly-lighted room we see a door, we
know that it is a door as certainly as if it were il-
lumined by a calcium light. As Professor Stuart
observes, " My ignorance of the electric condition
or the radio-active condition of an object beyond the
scope of my eyes or the reach of my hands, does not
darken the fact that it weighs three pounds or costs
five dollars. It does not darken anything. It may
Reality and Science 29
be itself dark whenever I need to know or wish to
know anything about it."
To say that the rose is red to us, is to state the
actual and verifiable truth, if by the statement we
mean that the rays of light which come to our
senses reflected from the rose are those we call red
rays. But it may be that in another sense the rose as
a thing in itself " das Ding an sich " is not red.
Perhaps it is really green, for it absorbs the blue
and yellow rays of the spectrum, making them its
own in an intimate sense. On the same premises,
the gold-orange poppy of California may be in its
actual nature royal purple, though it is not purple
to us. The reflected rays which come from it to
us form a chromatic opposite of purple.
We do not, therefore, know the inherent color of
any object, if it has any. We only know its color
as it appears to us. And this appearance is our
truth, not to be darkened or depreciated by our
failure to obtain some other kind of truth. The
scent which a dog follows is truth, not to be rated
of less value because it is wholly inappreciable to
human senses, even inconceivable to the human
mind, because its nature cannot be expressed in terms
of our previous experience.
Just as we may discredit the evidence of the
senses, so may we depreciate reason. Reason is our
way of disentangling or straightening out our sense-
perceptions, and their relations to each other and
to ourselves.
30 Reality and Science
In animals " sore bestead by the environment "
reason becomes a means of securing safety amid in-
creasing dangers. It is primarily the power to
choose among possible reflex responses to external
stimulus. From this it rises to the power to trace
relations of cause and effect. Complexity of the
nervous structure must increase with complexity of
environment. The process of adaptation through
natural selection develops reason from reflex action.
A choice among responses is safer than a single
automatic line of action. Those creatures survive
whose senses give adequate truth. But natural
selection gives no impulse toward complete truth.
It provides only ability to secure that truth an ani-
mal needs for its own safety, and the safety of its
progeny. For animal or man there is no provision
for complete knowledge, nor for infallible reasoning.
All our knowledge is slightly mitigated ignorance.
But to mitigate ignorance is to acquire truth.
But to say that we have no complete knowledge of
anything is very different from saying that we know
absolutely nothing. That is quite another proposi-
tion. To say that, when viewed " in the critical
light of philosophy," all our knowledge becomes
futile and meaningless, is to talk nonsense in large
ords. It is urged by Balfour that the simple af-
firmation, " The sun gives light," loses all its mean-
ing and passes outside the range of possibility, when
it is taken out of the category of human experience,
and discussed in terms of non-anthropomorphic
Reality and Science 31
philosophy. The sun is simply an unknown
mass of matter, if, indeed, it be a mass,
and if matter really exists. It can give nothing.
It certainly cannot give light, for light is only
a mode of motion, a vibration of an unknow-
able and impossible ether. At the best, we know
light only by its apparent, but not its real, effects.
But by using words in this way, any fact or hap-
pening can be made to appear as unreal as the most
fantastic dream. A man may be led to doubt his
own existence, and, if so, the existence of any ob-
ject within his environment. We may take the
discussion of " John's John " and " Thomas's
John," as given by Dr. Holmes. If John actually
exists, is he the real John ? Is the John that is, the
John as he appears to John himself? Or is the
John, as seen by Thomas, the real John? Or is he
the composite of the different Johns as seen by Rich-
ard and Henry, each one with a varying individu-
ality, and farther and farther away from the John
that John thinks that he knows? Is the real John
simply the John which constitutes the common ele-
ment in all this? Or is the real John for the per-
son speaking or thinking, only that John who will
" substantiate the predictions made about him in the
sense in which they are made " ? Have any of these
Johns an objective existence to the exclusion of any
of the others?
All that we know of the external universe is
drawn from impressions made directly on our
32 Reality and Science
nervous system, and from recorded or expressed im-
pressions made on the systems of others. These
impressions again have been interpreted in terms
of our own experience, and we ourselves are a part
of this external universe to be impressed on our-
selves. All that we know of ourselves is that which
is external to our own consciousness. Thus each
unit of human consciousness must form well or ill,
broadly or narrowly, a universe of its own. If
my mind is my kingdom, this kingdom in all its
parts is somewhat different from any other mental
universe. It is, moreover, constantly changing. It
was made but once, and it will never be duplicated.
When my vital processes cease, this kingdom will
dissolve " like the baseless fabric of a dream, leav-
ing not a wrack behind." Our minds are of " the
stuff that dreams are made of," and our bodies are
not more real if, indeed, even for purposes of
philosophy, we may separate mind from body.
Physically each man is an alliance of zooids, of
energides, of centers of protoplasmic action; each
so-called cell, or energide, a sort of quasi-individ-
ual organism; each member of this alliance hav-
ing its own processes of life, growth, death, and
reproduction; each one with its own cell-soul,
which in some unknown fashion presides over
all these processes. In the alliance of these
cells forming tissues and organs, we have the
phenomena of mutual help and mutual depend-
ence. We have these also in the phenomena of
Reality and Science 33
human society. In man these features of oTganic
life are seen on a larger and more complex scale
than in the lower forms, but an analysis of these
phenomena in either case leaves little meaning to
the word " self." " I think, therefore I am " gives
place to " we think, therefore we are." But that
again is not true ; for we think only as co-operating
groups of centers of energy, not as individual units
of life. The self or ego is an attribute of one
changing alliance as set off against another. What
is the vital force which holds this alliance together?
What is vitalism as distinct from mechanism? Is
either anything more than a name for the chemical
attributes of complex changing organic molecules?
Of what are these cells composed? Carbon, oxy-
gen, hydrogen, nitrogen, mineral salts. We know
these by name. We can isolate them and test their
properties. But how do they differ one from an-
other? Are their differences real and permanent?
They are forms of matter, and they are subject to
modes of motion. But does matter really exist?
Some mathematicians claim that all relations of pon-
derable matter and force might hold if the atoms of
matter, or the ions which compose them, were not
realities at all, but merely relations of part to part in
a universal ether. Each of these units possessed of
attraction or weight may be a vortex ring or eddy in
the ether, of which the ultimate atoms have vibra-
tion, but not attraction. If, therefore, the body of
man be an alliance of millions on millions of animal
34 Reality and Science
zooids, each cell being composed of millions on
millions of eddies in an inconceivable and impossible
ether, if the nature and existence of all things
around us be the same, and if, in detail, it be recog-
nizable only by its effect on the most unstable part
of this unstable structure, we stand appalled at the
unreality of the whole thing; we must fall back
again on the realities of common sense, from which
we find another starting-point. Once more things
become real and tangible. From speculations as to
the nature of matter we turn with relief to this
sentence of Professor William S. Franklin,* as
quoted by Dr. James :
" I think that the sickliest notion of physics, even
if a student gets it, is that it is the science of masses,
molecules, and the ether. And I think that the
healthiest notion, even if a student does not wholly
get it, is that physics is the science of the ways of
taking hold of bodies and pushing them. These
concepts of mass and molecule and ether are vali-
dated, if at all, and so far as they are at all, by the
contribution they make to the effective taking hold
of bodies and pushing them."
In the process of taking hold of things and push-
ing them, we have found some guides in the con-
duct of life. We know that we have developed
some propositions workable and livable. We have
gained some truth which stands our severest tests.
This truth holds its own, from whatever side we
* Science, January 2, 1903.
Reality and Science 35
may assault it. We can trust our lives to it, and to
the methods by which we have worked it out.
Every day, perhaps, as already indicated, we trust
our lives to the methods of the chemist, and to those
of the electrician. Each conclusion of science rep-
resents a continuous testimony of human experi-
ence. Observation and experiment form the basis
of science. The two are one in essence. An ob-
servation is our record of an experiment which has
gone on for ages, and in which the setting is beyond
our powers. In an experiment, we arrange the
minor details of the setting to fit our own limita-
tions. The breaks in the testimony of experience
but add to it strength, for each apparent break is
but the appearance of a new principle, a new rela-
tion of truth.
The " philosophic doubt " of the reality of ex-
ternal things is often simply the rhetorical trick of
describing the known in terms of the unknown.
Philosophic doubt, as set forth by Mr. Balfour,
seems to be a process by which men question the
only things they know to be true, in order to prove
the reality of things they know are not true. To
show that truth and falsehood are indistinguishable
in the one case, is used as an argument to prove that
falsehood is truth in another case, and that truth
and falsehood are alike as a general thing. That
subjective sensations often force their way among
objective realities, is no evidence that the universe
about us is, after ail, subjective.
36 Reality and Science
We may use the same philosophic process in de-
scribing to the child the sound of a bell in terms
of nerve-fiber irritations in the auditory capsules,
due to the tintinnabulations of the tympanic drum,
in response to the impact of atmospheric molecules
set in motion by remote vibrations of a large metallic
body. And the child's answer, " it is just a bell," is
essentially scientific. For the child, this describes
the sensation in terms of previous experience. Con-
structively, by the process of doubting the real to
prove the unreal, we may build up out of the com-
monest material the dregs of teacups, or the waves
of clouds, or the entrails of animals, an " occult sci-
ence " or a new sciosophy. It is possible to speak of
the unknown in terms of the known, of the infinite
in terms of human experience. In this fashion, men
have talked with God, and reported their conversa-
tions in diverse languages. In this fashion, Bal-
four gives to his positive foundations of belief an
apparent reality as fallacious as the unreality he as-
signs to the foundations of science. To speak of
the unknown in terms of the known, is the basis of
the conception of the anthropomorphism of God.
This fallacy gives point to Haeckel's sneer at the
current conception of Deity as that of a " gaseous
vertebrate." " The measure of a man " is the
basis of human knowledge, and only that which can
be brought to the measure is part of man's knowl-
edge.
But, however unattainable the conception of com-
Reality and Science 37
plete and final truth, partial and workable truth sur-
rounds us everywhere, and through this truth every
man and every animal has its hold on existence. In
this hold on existence Science has her origin. It
is the business of science to discriminate between
realities and illusions, between objective and sub-
jective nerve conditions, between rationality and de-
lusion. A reality is an impression made by a con-
temporaneous event. An illusion is an impression
made by a past event, or by a derangement in the
structure, or operation of the nerve structures them-
selves. It is easy for common sense to tell a reality
from an illusion. To be able to do this, is the es-
sence of sanity. Science is sanity. Sanity is liv-
able. Insanity is not.
Delusion and illusion are alike destructive in the
conduct of life. The " borderland of spirit," of
which we hear much of late the debatable territory
where subjective creations and objective facts jostle
each other at will is a dangerous region for the
living man to traverse. In so far as one is lead-
ing a passive life, not concerned with earning his
bread or with controlling the affairs of others, these
dangers may seem of little importance, because they
are never brought to the test of actuality. But the
man who does things, must know exactly what he is
doing. He cannot afford to confuse subjective and
objective conditions. He cannot confuse his reali-
ties with the creations of dreams or of drugs.
38 Reality and Science
Among men in a general way, " hearts insurgent,"
impulses uncontrolled, recklessness as to the re-
sults of conduct and to the teachings of human
experience, mean short shrift in the world of actu-
alities.
It is true, as I have said, that every " reality " has
a large subjective element. The impression made
by an external object is modified by the nature of the
object on which it is impressed, and by the num-
ber and character of previous records on which it is,
as it were, superimposed. It is not the external
fact, but our record of it, with which we must deal.
The impression made by the shot of a gun becomes
a reality when the pressure of the air-waves reaches
our nerve centers, though the explosion may have
preceded the " reality " by several seconds. What-
ever else it may be, this explosion is not a noise as
we hear noise. But the noise bears a definite rela-
tion to the explosion which is its source. It has a
known and tested relation to powder and shot, and
the pull on the trigger. It must give to the mind
information by which the actual occurrence may be
correctly interpreted, although in terms of previous
occurrences. On the accuracy of this interpretation
the fitness of our response through nerve control
of the muscles must be conditioned. In every-day
matters, as those relating to the squash in the gar-
den, the dictates of common sense are obvious
enough. The impression and response are alike
simple. Our emotions are not moved by the squash,
Reality and Science 39
nor is our recognition of its nature vitiated by an
illusion. No delusion results from any defects in
our reasoning in regard to it. But in very many
relations of life, the truth is involved in difficult con-
ditions and the problem of common sense is ren-
dered most complex. To discriminate in a com-
plex and bewildering environment, is the task of
the higher common sense, which we call science.
The degree of coincidence of our subjective im-
pressions with objective truth, is graded by its liv-
ability, by its veracity in terms of life. Actuality
and reality, object and impression, are not the same
any more than the shadow is identical with the
substance, but the shadow follows the substance with
never an innovation on its own account. For a
man to deceive himself in any large degree, to make
of this world a fools' paradise or a fools' hell,
which is another name for the same thing, is com-
monly to find a short way out of it. This fact in
all its bearings is our final proof that man deals
with a world outside of himself, not with one merely
imagined by him. Wisdom is our knowledge of
this outside world. Long life and large influence
are derived from wisdom. Virtue is the working
arm of wisdom, and wisdom and virtue, according
to the testimony of all the ages, unite to make life
effective. Folly and vice soon destroy our free-
dom, and hand us over to the crushing grasp of the
giants. We lie prone " at the feet of the strong
god Circumstance," unless we can find out for our-
40 Reality and Science
selves the method by which this strong god may
be made to work in our behalf. In our knowledge
of ourselves and of our limiting relations, we find
the truth that makes us free.
Our experience with the objective universe and
its effects on our subjective consciousness, seems to
imply the existence of a still larger consciousness,
in which objective and subjective should be united.
The objective universe should be within the grasp of
some intelligence. The final answer to the world
problem cannot be disconnected, disjointed matter
and force in unrelated fragments. The universe is
too gigantic, too complex, too exact in its relation
of cause and effect, too conscientious in its rewards
and punishment, to exist in our consciousness alone.
There seems to be outside ourselves, as well as
within, a compelling " force that makes for
righteousness." Outside ourselves is " the cease-
less flow of energy and the rational intelligence that
pervades it." No part of this flow of force can
we fully comprehend, but we can realize its per-
sistence and the consistency of its methods. We
find no chance movement in the universe, " no
variableness, no shadow of turning." That there
should exist a " law of Heaven and Earth whose
way is solid, substantial, vast, and unchanging,"
seems to imply an intelligence adequate to have
made it so, and to comprehend it as a whole, not
merely as shown in casual and inexorable frag-
ments. This intelligence should deal with terms of
Reality and Science 41
absolute truth, freed from all figures of speech
drawn from human experience, and of all anthropo-
morphism imposed by the limitations of human ac-
tion. Only a " God of the things as they are " can
" know things as they really are," and in our rela-
tions to these things, we become conscious of the
condition of being, gracious and inexorable, the
" Goodness and Severity of God."
It is said that if any geologist were to make a
cross-section of the Andes or the Sierra Nevada
anywhere, he would in this section have a clue to
the whole formation of the Cordilleras, the great-
est mountain system on the globe. In like fashion,
if any man of science or any philosopher could form
a complete picture of any object or of any act
whatever, he would hold the key to the Universe.
To strive to gain this key has been the perennial
ideal of philosophy. To attain such knowledge of
the relations of things as to safeguard the con-
duct of life, is an ideal of science. From materials
science has tested may be built up a philosophy. If
we were to know anything, " all in all," " a flower
in a crannied wall," or a bit of the wall itself, we
should have the clue to everything, " we should
know what God is and man is."
In the various forms of applied science, or knowl-
edge in action, the anthropomorphic element is
everywhere evident. If man is to use his knowl-
edge, it must be workable by him. Its truth must
in some degree be brought to the measure of a
42 Reality and Science
man. This man-adapted quality has been called the
" dramatic tone " in science. " Activity is imputed
to phenomena for the purpose of organizing them
into a dramatically consistent system."
On the basis of human relations, philosophy tries
to look at the universe in some degree as through
the eyes of God. This purpose is most exalted. Its
efforts are justified by their effects on the conduct
of life. The subject-matter of philosophy ranges
from the puerile to the incomprehensible and only
science that is, organized " common sense " can
distinguish the two. Good and bad, not embodied
in concrete cases, are alike abstractions. Human
knowledge and human action have human limita-
tions. One of these is that whatever cannot be
stated in terms of human experience, cannot be com-
prehended by man. Whatever cannot be thought,
cannot be lived. Whatever cannot be lived, is not
yet true.
To the category of philosophy belongs what we
commonly call belief. Belief is a general faith in
the final result of the varied elements which enter
into the experience of life. From time to time one
or another phase of belief has crystallized into a
creed. A creed (credo) is my statement of what I
think is true. It is my interpretation of my own
grouping of my own realities. A creed is alive
when it is livable, when it looks backward to human
experience, forward to the conduct of life.
" The essence of belief," says Dr. Charles San-
Reality and Science 43
ders Peirce, " is the establishment of a habit, and
different beliefs are distinguished by the different
modes of action to which they give rise. If be-
liefs do not differ in this respect, if they appease
the same doubt by producing the same rule of ac-
tion, then no mere differences in the manner of con-
sciousness of them can make them different beliefs,
any more than playing a tune in different keys is
playing different tunes. Imaginary distinctions are
often drawn between beliefs which differ only in
their mode of expression; the wrangling which en-
sues is real enough, however."
In clever paradox, Chesterton says : " Some peo-
ple call a creed a dead thing. The truth is, a creed
is not only a living thing, but it is the only thing
that can live. It was exactly because revolutionists
like Swinburne would not have a perpetual creed,
that they did not have a perpetual revolution. It
was because Swinburne would not fix his faith that
he fell away afterwards into accidental and vulgar
jingoism, and, indeed, narrowly escaped being made
poet-laureate."
Of course, not even so audacious an essayist as
Chesterton would claim permanence for any actual
creed in the actual world. The creeds of Christen-
dom change with the changing years. It is not the
formulation which endures, but the spirit which has
led men to believe that there was indeed something
to formulate.
The creeds which express a veering philosophy,
44 Reality and Science
the subtleties of theological dogma, have no per-
manence in human history.
But the verities of human life, the common ex-
perience of love, sorrow, hope, faith, action, re-
ligion, these do not change. Like the truths of ex-
ternal nature, all these are forever renewed and
verified by renewed human experience. Love
makes for life. Action is life. To give life more
abundantly, is the essence of religion. We can trust
life, that life is worth living. We can trust ac-
tion; for action is the primal purpose of feeling and
thinking. We can trust love, for it has its justifica-
tion in happy and wholesome life. These intangible
forces, on which rests the development of religion,
have been pre-eminently safe in the history of man-
kind. A certain dignity attaches itself to a creed,
however crude or even absurd in the logic of its
statement, because it is in some degree associated
with religion, and then it deals in some degree
with the noblest springs of human conduct. We
can therefore believe, " believe and venture," even
though some part of our belief is not at once re-
ducible to terms of human experience.
In his " L'Evolution Creatrice," Henri Bergson *
thus expresses the function of the intellect in the
face of realities :
" The human intellect is not at all such a thing
as Plato represents in the allegory of the cave. It
is as little its function to gaze idly upon shadows
* Translation of Professor Arthur O. Lovejoy.
Reality and Science 45
as they pass, as it is, turning backward, to lose it-
self in the contemplation of the celestial splendor.
It has other work to do. Yoked like oxen to a
heavy task, we feel the play of our muscles, the
weight of the plow, the resistance of the soil. To
act, and to know that we act, to enter into contact
with reality, indeed, to live reality . . . such is the
function of man's intellect. Philosophy can be but
an effort to immerse ourselves afresh in the uni-
versal life."
II
REALITY AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE
" The animal supports itself upon the plant ; man goes
astride the animal, and all humanity, scattered through space
and time, is one immense army, galloping beside and behind
and before us, drawing each of us on in a sweeping charge
that can beat down every resistance." HENRI BERGSON.
EVOLUTION is orderly change. Organic
evolution is the orderly change in the suc-
cession of living organisms. In the main it is a
process of adaptation, by which the needs of the
organism are brought into closer and closer cor-
respondence with the demands of the environment.
Every step in advance is a concession to the en-
vironment, and each concession demands still others
in the direction of more perfect adaptation. The
movement towards adaptation is conditioned on the
destruction of the non-adapted and the non-adapt-
able. This process is known as Natural Selection.
It is the only known cause of the forward move-
ment in the process of evolution. Other factors,
internal and external, enter into the processes
of orderly change, but the survival of the fit-
test in the struggle for existence is apparently
47
48 Reality and the Conduct of Life
the sole reason for the ultimate presence and per-
sistence of fitness or adaptation of all sorts and
kinds.
The trend of organic evolution is, therefore,
toward safer relation of activity to environment.
In its higher phases it is demand for wisdom in
action. Human development finds its culmination
in the rational conduct of life. The most highly
organized structures are those of the brain and
nervous system. The finest material known to
chemistry goes to form the human brain. The
brain and its associated structures form what we
may term a device for making action safe. The
safety of action is the animal's test of realities.
Conduct of life in the large sense means the ra-
tional choice among all possible responses to en-
vironmental stimulus. Intelligence in the higher
animals and man involves the choice of responses
as distinguished from the " tropism '' or mechan-
ical responses of the lower animals and plants, and
as distinguished from the instincts or automatic
complex responses shown by all the higher animals
and by men.
All sensation is correlated with the power of ac-
tion. If an organism is not to act it does not feel.
The mind is at bottom and primarily the director
of motion and of locomotion. With the increasing
complexity of the functions of action, the nervous
system and its functions become more complex.
Wherever motion exists in organic nature, there is
Reality and the Conduct of Life 49
some corresponding irritability or sensitiveness to
external conditions. This irritability is of the na-
ture of mind. In a complex organism, the struc-
ture and position of the sensorium or mind center
depends on the work it has to do, or, rather,
through heredity, it repeats the duties the organ
has had to perform in the life of the creature's an-
cestors.
A typical plant may be regarded as a sessile ani-
mal, an organism which does not move. It is a
colony of organic cells with the power of motion
within its parts, but without the power of moving
as a whole. It draws its nourishment for the most
part from inorganic nature, from air and water.
Its life is not conditioned on a search for food, nor
on the movement of the body as a whole. This
search is conducted by means of the feeding parts
alone. These feeding parts turn toward or from
the sun, upward or downward under the impulse of
gravitation, outward toward water or other food.
Darwin has shown the circumnutation or spiral
squirming of all the growing parts of a living plant.
That the plant has no nerve centers is due to the
fact that, being sessile, it cannot make use of such
centers. Its mind, if we may use the expression, is
diffused through the region of its growth. But
when cells are co-ordinated to form an animal, or
moving and feeding organism, some sort of central
control becomes a necessity, to be developed in pro-
portion to the demands laid upon it. Such control
50 Reality and the Conduct of Life
in its degree is the conduct of life. The successful
conduct of life is the verification of the " realities,"
impressed by the environment on the animal's
nervous system.
We may perhaps not improperly turn from the
rudimentary and unillumined conduct of life possi-
ble to the lower animal, to consider the same matter
in a much higher phase. The conduct of life is the
noblest art possible to man. The essential function
of religion is found in the control of the conduct of
life in its loftiest aspects. The spread of any form
of religion indicates that it rests on a degree of
truth. This is proved by its workableness, though
the fact that it meets conditions in human life does
not tend to verify other assumptions which may be
connected with it. That the Mormon religion may
tend to make men sober and industrious, or that it
gives consolation on the death-bed, speaks for its
truth or at least for its utility, but it does not in any
degree argue for polygamy, nor does it verify the
visions of Joseph Smith. These must be judged
by other and very different tests.
The vitality of the religion of Jesus rests on its
fitness to the needs of civilizing and civilized men.
The founder of this religion was not interested in
mysteries and superstitions, in creeds and argu-
ments, in pomp and circumstance, in imperialism or
ecclesiasticism. No ceremony was sacred to him,
no emotion praiseworthy, unless it led to doing. Its
test he found in its fruits. Let it " feed my
Reality and the Conduct of Life 51
lambs." Life is justified by service, not by dom-
ination nor by happiness alone.
To believe that life is worth living, to trust to the
reality of external things as reproduced in the
realities of the human mind, to have red blood in
one's arteries, to throw oneself with courage and
enthusiasm into the affairs of the day, to be satis-
fied with the universe as it is, and to be happy, to
play a man's part in it, all this is justified by the
tests of science. All this makes for the abundance
of life. It is a sufficient answer to the philosophy
of despair, that pessimism is not livable. A philoso-
phy which impedes or confuses our conduct of life
cannot be sound doctrine. Happiness in this world
is the accompaniment of normal life, in normal ac-
tion, in normal relationship to external things. It
can be secured on no other terms. Happiness
makes room for more happiness, while imaginary
pleasures, the illusions of nervous disorder, hysteria,
and drunkenness destroy the nervous system itself,
and render rational enjoyment impossible. Doing,
struggling, helping, loving, always something posi-
tive, something moving, is the condition of happi-
ness.
Each living being is a link in a continuous chain
of life, going back in the past to the unknown be-
ginnings of life. Into this chain of life, so far as
we know, death has never entered, because only in
life has the ancestor the power of producing and
casting off the germ cells by which life is continued.
52 Reality and the Conduct of Life
Each individual is in a sense the guardian of the
life chain in which it forms a link. Each link is
tested as to its fitness, by the conditions external to
itself in which it carries on its functions. Those
creatures unadapted to the environment, whatever
it may be, are destroyed, as well as those not adapt-
able. And this environment by which each is
tested is the objective universe. It is not the world
as man knows it. It is the world as it is. Nature
has no pardon for ignorance or illusions. She is
no respecter of persons. Her laws and her pen-
alties consider only what is, and have no dealings
with semblances. By this experience we come to
know that reality exists, that there is an external
world to the demands of which our senses, our rea-
son, our powers of action are all concessions. The
safety of each chain of life is proportioned to the
adaptation of its links to these conditions. This
adaptation is, in its essence, obedience. The obedi-
ence of any creature is conditioned on its response
in action to sensation or knowledge. Sense per-
ception and intellect alike stand as advisers to its
power of choice. The power of choice involves the
need to choose right; for wrong choice leads to
death. Death ends the chain of which the creature
is a link, and the life of the world is continued by
those whose line of choice has been safe. Death is
not the punishment for folly, but it is folly's in-
evitable result, given time enough. Severity of con-
dition and stress of competition are met in life by
Reality and the Conduct of Life 53
the survival of those adequate to meet these condi-
tions. Thus, in the struggle for existence in or-
ganic life, when instinct and impulse fail, reason
rises to insure safety. At last with civilized man
reason comes to be a chief element in the guidance
of life. With greater power to know, and hence to
choose safely, greater complexity of conditions be-
comes possible, and the multifarious demands of
modern civilization find some at least who can meet
them fairly well. To such the stores of human wis-
dom must be open. To others, safety in new condi-
tions lies only in imitation. The multitudes of civ-
ilized men, like the multitudes of animals, are kept
alive by the instinct of conventionality. The in-
stinct to follow those who have passed over safely is
one of the most useful of all impulses to action. In
the same connection we must recognize authority .as
a most important source of knowledge to the in-
dividual; but its value is proportioned to the ability
of the individual to use the tests wisdom must ap-
ply to the credentials of authority.
But instinct, appetite, impulse, conventionality,
and respect for authority all point backward. They
are the outcome of past conditions. " New occa-
sions bring new duties," and new facts and laws
must be learned if men prove adequate to the life
their own institutions and their own development
have brought upon them. To the wise and obedi-
ent the most complex life brings no special strain
or discomfort. It is as easy to do great things as
54 Reality and the Conduct of Life
small, if one only knows how. But to the ignorant,
weak, and perverse, the extension of civilization be-
comes an engine of destruction. The freedom of
self-realization involves the freedom of self-perdi-
tion. Hence appears the often-discussed relation
of " progress and poverty " in social develop-
ment. Hence it comes that civilization, of which
the essence is mutual help or altruism, seems
to become one vast instrument for the killing of
fools.
In the specialization of life, conditions are con-
stantly changing. Every age is an age of transi-
tion, and transition brings unrest because it im-
pairs the value of conventionality. With the low-
est forms of life there is no safety save in absolute
obedience to the laws of the world around them.
This obedience becomes automatic and hereditary,
because the disobedient leave no chain of descent.
All instincts, appetites, impulses to action, even cer-
tain forms of illusions, point toward such obedi-
ence. Whether we regard these phenomena as vari-
ations selected because useful, or as inherited hab-
its, their relation is the same. They survive as
guarantees of future obedience because they have
enforced obedience in the past. With the most en-
lightened man, the same necessity for obedience ex-
ists. The instincts, appetites, and impulses of the
lower animals remain in him, or disappear only as
reason is adequate to take their place. And, in
any case, there is no alleviation for the woes of
Reality and the Conduct of Life 55
life " save the absolute veracity of action, the
resolute facing of the world as it is."
The intense practicality of all this must be recog-
nized. The truths of science are approximate, not
absolute. They must be stated in terms of human
consciousness. They look forward to possible hu-
man action. Knowledge which can only ac-
cumulate, without being woven into conduct, has
been ever " a weariness to the flesh." As food
must be formed into tissues, so must knowledge
pass over into action. In the lower animals, sensa-
tion, automatically, in large part, passes over into
motion. In like manner, in man sensation and
thought find their natural result in action. In like
fashion, science leads to art, knowledge to power.
Power and effectiveness are conditioned on ac-
curacy. Every failure in the sense-organs, every
form of deterioration of the nerves, shows itself in
reduction of effectiveness. Reduced effectiveness
manifests itself through the processes of natural
selection as lessened safety of life. Thus the de-
generation of the nervous system through excesses,
through precocious activity, or through the effect
of drugs, shows itself in untrustworthy perceptions,
in uncontrolled muscles, and in general insecurity.
Incidentally, all these are recorded by fall in social
standing. The sober mind is necessary to the se-
curity of life.
In general all civilized men are well born. They
come of good stock. For the lineage of perversity,
56 Reality and the Conduct of Life
insanity, and even stupidity, is never a long one.
The perverse, insane, and stupid survive through the
tolerance of others. They cannot maintain them-
selves, and, in spite of charity and the sense of con-
ventionality, the mortality caused by the " fool-
killer " is something enormous. It is an essential
element in race progress. It increases with the ad-
vance of civilization, because of increasing com-
plexity of conditions. It is an offset for the sys-
tematic life-saving which science makes possible,
and which virtue makes necessary. Men fail in
life through lack of whole-hearted interest in the
things around them which might be at their service,
and in their " shuffling attitude " in the face of
observed or observable cause and effect.
The recent " recrudescence of superstition," a
striking accompaniment of an age of science, is in
a sense dependent on science. Science has made it
possible. The traditions of science are so diffused
in the community at large that fools find it safe to
defy them. Those who take hallucinations for
realities; those whose memory impressions and
motor dreams a defective will fails to control;
those who mistake subjective sensations produced
by disease or disorder for objective conditions all
these sooner or later lose their place in the line. In
falling out, they take with them the whole line of
their possible descendants. The condition of mind
which is favorable to mysticism, superstition, and
revery, is unfavorable to life, and the continuance
Reality and the Conduct of Life 57
of such condition leads to misery. On the bill-
board across the street, as I write, I see the ad-
vertisement of a lecture on " The Ethical Value of
Living in ^,wo Worlds at Once." Whoever thus
lives in t\\o worlds is certain soon to prove in-
adequate for one of them, and this will be the one
most charged with realities.
If all men sought healing from the blessed hand-
kerchief of the lunatic, or from contact with old
bones or old clothes; if all physicians used "re-
vealed remedies," or the remedies " Nature finds "
for each disease; if all business were conducted by
faith; if all supposed "natural rights" of man
were recognized in legislation, the insecurity of
these beliefs would speedily appear. Not only civ-
ilization, but civilized man himself, would vanish
from the earth. The long and dreary road of prog-
ress through fool-killing would for centuries be
traversed again. That is strong which endures.
Might does not make right, but that which is right
will justify itself as the basis of race stability.
So closely is knowledge linked to action, that in
general among animals and men sensation is ab-
sent or not trustworthy when it cannot result in ac-
tion. Objects beyond our reach, as the stars or
the clouds, are not truthfully pictured. Accuracy of
perception grows less as the square of the distance
increases. It is a recognized law of psychology
that only medium variations and differences are cor-
rectly estimated. The senses deal correctly only
58 Reality and the Conduct of Life
with the near, the mind only with the common.
The unfamiliar lends itself readily to illusions. The
familiar is recognized chiefly by breaks in continu-
ity. The real forces of nature are hicjpen by their
grandeur, by their duration. Men see the waves
on the surface of the sea, but not the mighty tides
beneath it. Again, the senses are less acute than
the mechanism of sense organs would make possi-
ble. This is shown through occasional cases of
hypersesthesia or ultra-sensitiveness. This occurs
in abnormal individuals, or in diseased conditions.
It occurs normally in creatures whose lives in some
sense depend on it. Thus some of the most re-
markable exhibitions of " mind reading " may be
paralleled by retriever dogs, who have been pur-
posely bred to sustain the hyperaesthesia of the sense
of smell. Hyperaesthesia of more than one of the
senses would be to most animals a source of con-
fusion and danger rather than of safety. The high
development of the brain in man in large degree
takes the place of acuteness of special senses. It
is part of the function of the will to regulate the
senses and to suppress those impressions which
should not lead to action.
In his perception of external relations man is
aided by the devices of science, which may be taken
up or laid down at will. By means of instruments
of precision any of the senses may be extended to
an enormous degree, and at the same time the per-
sonal equation or individual source of error is
Reality and the Conduct of Life 59
largely eliminated, or, rather, standardized and
methodized. The camera may be focused to any
desired degree of clearness of image. Once ad-
justed the instrument tells its story. There is no
evading its report. The use of instruments of
precision is the special characteristic of the advance
of science. No instrument of precision can give us
the ultimate essence of any part of the universe.
No scientific experiment can do away with the
measure of human experience as the basis of in-
telligibility. At the same time we can throw large
illuminations into the " dimly lighted room " in
which the phenomena of consciousness take place.
By the simple process of photography, for example,
we may reproduce the objects of environment.
That such pictures do express phases of reality ad-
mits of no doubt ; for in the photographic camera all
personal equation is eliminated. As to form of out-
line and reflection of light, " the sun paints true "
under our direction as to method, and the paintings
thus made by means of the action of non-living mat-
ter produce on our senses impressions coinciding
with those of the outside world itself.
How do we know that this is truth? Because
confidence in it adds to the safety of life. We can
trust our lives to it. If it were an illusion it would
kill, because action based on illusion leads, in the
long run, to destruction, though it may take more
than the single generation to demonstrate this fact.
One can trust his life, as elsewhere stated, to the
60 Reality and the Conduct of Life
message sent on a telegraph wire. All who travel
by rail do this daily. One can trust his life to the
reading of a thermometer. The chemist's tests
will select for us foods among poisons. We may
trust these tests absolutely. We may safely and
sometimes wisely take poisons into our bodies if we
know what we are doing. By the advice of a physi-
cian, trusting in the weigher's instruments of preci-
sion, poisons may do no harm. One mite of
strychnine may be an aid to vital processes ; a dozen
may mean instant cessation of these processes by
the unmeasured intensity of their action. The
chemist's balance advises us as to all this. All these
instruments of precision belong to science. They
are examples taken from thousands of the methods
of " organized common sense."
By means of common sense, organized and un-
organized, all creatures that can move are enabled
to move safely. The security of human life in its
relations to environment is a sufficient answer to the
" philosophic doubt " as to the existence of or pos-
sibility of authentic knowledge of external nature;
for if all phenomena were within the mind, no one
of them could be more dangerous than another. A
dream of murder is no more dangerous than a
dream of a " pink tea," so long as its action is con-
fined to the limits of the dream. But the relation
of life to environment is inseparable and inexorable.
Cause and effect are perfectly linked. This is a
world of absolute verity, and its demand is abso-
Reality and the Conduct of Life 61
lute obedience. Life without concessions or con-
ditions is the philosopher's dream. By constant
concession we control our environment, raising the
human will to the rank of a cosmic force.
What we know as pain is the necessary signal of
physiological danger. Without pain, life, condi-
tioned by the environment, would be impossible.
Organic beings need such a stimulus to veracity.
Those dangers which are painless are the hardest
to avoid; the diseases which are painless are the
most difficult to cure, because the patient has no
faith in their existence.
The ideal in the mind tends always to go over
into action. The noble ideal discloses itself in a
noble life. It is part of the wisdom of each gen-
eration, its science as well as its religion, to form
the ideals of the next. History is foreshadowed
in these ideals before it is enacted on the stage of
life.
If the strong man is to rise above convention-
ality, suggestion, and authority as guides to con-
duct, so must he rise above the domination of
hereditary impulses. Conventionality and author-
ity hold in check the bodily impulses, once neces-
sities under wild and rude conditions. To escape
from human control to be ruled by the animal pas-
sions is not liberty. No man becomes a genuine
" superman " except through self-control, superior
to that of other men.
An old parable of the conduct of life shows man
62 Reality and the Conduct of Life
in a light skiff in a tortuous channel beset with
rocks, borne by a falling current to an unknown sea.
He is kept alert by the dangers of his situation. As
his boat bumps against the rocks he must bestir
himself. If this contact were not painful he would
not heed it; if it were not destructive he would not
need to heed it. Had he no power to act, he could
not heed it if he would. But with sensation, will,
freedom to act, narrow though the limits of free-
dom be, his safety rests in some degree in his own
hands. That he has thus far steered his course
fairly well is shown by the fact that he is still above-
board. He may choose his course for himself
not an easy thing to do, unless he scan most care-
fully the nature of rocks and waves, and weigh
carefully his control of the boat itself. He may
follow the course of others with some degree of
the safety they have attained. He may follow his
own impulses, in man's case inherited from those
who found them safe guides to action. But in new
conditions neither conventionality nor impulse nor
desire will suffice. He must know what is about
him in order that he may know what he is doing.
He must know what he is doing in order to do any-
thing effectively. Ignorant action is more danger-
ous than no action at all. Man must realize the aim
of his effort. He must know what he is striving to
do in order so to question reality as to secure an-
swers that shall further and shall refine his activity.
The " sealed orders " which control the lower ani-
Reality and the Conduct of Life 63
mals and our " brother organisms, the plants," are
not adequate for the conduct of human life. With
the power of movement and the " knowledge of
good and evil," man has no choice but to accept the
conditions. And thus it comes again that there is
" no alleviation for the sufferings of man except
through absolute veracity of thought and action,
and the resolute facing of the world as it is."
And for the same reason also it is well for man
not to " pretend to know or to believe what he
really does not know or believe." The appetites,
impulses, passions, illusions, delusions even, which
have proved safe in the past development of life,
science would not destroy. But these must be sub-
ordinate to the will and the intellect. And this sub-
ordination of the lower to the higher motives in
life is the certain trend of human evolution, as it
has been the ideal of those who, in the name of re-
ligion, have striven worthily for man's spiritual ad-
vancement.
Ill
REALITY AND MONISM
" The analysis which is necessary to let us master the
phenomena of life furnishes us with a surer base than that
which leads directly to explain such phenomena." ALFRED
GIARD.
ONE of the conspicuous features of modern
philosophical discussion is a revival in the
name of science of the doctrine of Monism. A
phase of this doctrine is that of " a completely uni-
fied knowledge in which physical and mental world
meet on equal terms." This, according to James,
was " the original Greek ideal to which men must
surely return."
The doctrine of monism, in whatever form, pro-
claims the essential unity of things which, in their
various contacts with human experience, appear to
us different. The primal conception of monism is
that there is one spirit or one essence in all that
exists, whether ponderable or imponderable, whether
visible or invisible, tangible or impalpable; that the
whole cognizable world is constituted and has been
developed in accordance with one common funda-
mental law. This one is defined as " the concrete
65
66 Reality and Monism
unified whole of all that is." In this view we are
to conceive that all categories at bottom are one,
matter and force, sense and spirit, object and sub-
ject, Nature and God. This fundamental concep-
tion of monism has never been made really in-
telligible, because it can be 'stated in no terms of
human experience. There is no way known to us
by which we can expose it to scientific tests.
Whether it be the noblest generalization of philoso-
phy or a mere play on words, no one can say, for
no one knows. No one yet knows how to find out.
According to Professor Stuart, " There are two
ways in which it may be sought to establish a mo-
nistic hypothesis : ( i ) We may try to synthesize all
descriptive science to the end of showing how all
phases of reality are expressions of a common prin-
ciple. This is what Spencer, for one, attempted.
(2) It may be argued from the fact that science
and mathematics exist that knower and known must
be of kindred nature. From the fact that we see
no limit to the possibilities of scientific research we
may infer that all reality is knowable, though not
known. The first of these principles is Kantianism,
although Kant was not a monist, by profession at
least. Those who came after him, Hegel and other
idealists, thought that they saw a way of establish-
ing monism by combining these two general prem-
ises. This is, in a sense, an empirical proof of mon-
ism, though we may regard the logic as insecure."
Man is able in a certain way to make his way in
Reality and Monism 67
the world. Obviously, then, he is not an alien ut-
terly. He is thus far in unity with the rest of the
universe. So much of monism we may all accept.
The amount and nature of this " unity " we cannot
define. Whether we can accept such unity of na-
ture once for all and wholesale, in face of the visible
lack of unity about us, becomes a test of our faith in
monism.
The doctrine of monism can be brought to a final
verdict of science, if its logical necessities come
within the domain of action. To all the tests we
can give, of course, force is not identical with mat-
ter, though the two have never been separated. To
all the tests we can give, there are many different
kinds of matter, and many different ways in which
energy may show itself. At the most, those who
hold to the unity of matter in its chemical forms
may maintain that units of matter are subject to
breaking up, to evolution, or to processes of re-
combination. Thus far our chemists have not
found it so.
" Rational unity of all things," as Professor
James admits, " is an inspiring conception," but it
seems to involve a condition of the universe in which
" reality is ready-made and complete from all
eternity," while, in apparent fact, reality " is still in
the making, and awaits part of its completion from
the future. On the one hand, the universe is ab-
solutely secure, on the other it is still pursuing its
adventures."
68 Reality and Monism
On the one side, according to James, " we have
only one edition of the universe, unfinished, grow-
ing in all sorts of places, especially in the places
where thinking beings are at work. On the ra-
tionalist side, we have a universe in many editions,
one real one, the infinite folio, or edition de luxe,
eternally complete, and here the various finite edi-
tions, full of false readings, distorted and mutilated
each in its own way." " It is impossible not to see a
temperamental difference at work in the choice of
sides. The rationalist mind, radically taken, is of
a doctrinaire and authoritative complexion. The
phrase, ' must be,' is ever on his lips. The belly-
band of its universe must be tight. A radical
pragmatist, on the other hand, is a happy-go-lucky,
anarchistic sort of creature. If he had to live in a
tub like Diogenes, he wouldn't mind at all, if the
hoops were loose and the staves let in the sun."
" Whoever claims absolute theological unity," I
quote again from Professor James, " saying that
there is one purpose that every detail of the uni-
verse observes, dogmatizes at his own risk.
Theologians who dogmatize thus find it more and
more impossible, as our acquaintance with the war-
ring interests of the world's parts grows more con-
crete, to imagine what the one climacteric purpose
may possibly be like. We see, indeed, that certain
evils minister to ulterior goods, that the bitter
makes the cocktail better, and that a bit of danger
or hardship puts us to our trumps. We can vaguely
Reality and Monism 69
generalize this into the doctrine that all the evil
in the universe is but instrumental to its greater
perfection. But the scale of evil actually in sight
defies all human tolerance and transcendental ideal-
ism in the pages of a Bradley or a Royce brings us
no farther than the book of Job did. God's ways
are not as our ways, so let us put our hands upon
our mouth. A god who can relish such superfluities
of horror is no God for human beings to appeal to.
His animal spirits are too high. In other words,
the Absolute with His one purpose is not the man-
like God of Common People."
We may balance against this striking and half-hu-
morous statement these words of Charles Ferguson :
" The beginning of Science is in Congeniality
with God. The larger word for science is con-
science, and the final test of the authenticity and
permanence of a physical fact is its moral reason-
ableness its congruity with right. Do you pro-
test sometimes with vehemence that God is cruel
and unjust? Justice must then be rooted very deep
in the heart of things since it dares to confront om-
nipotence with a fist so feeble to back its claim!
But you may well ! You must not submit to be bul-
lied by earthquakes and tornadoes, or by the sun,
moon, and stars. If royalties and usuries and
monopolies are unjust, they must not be tolerated.
And if gravitation and cohesion are unjust, they
must be put down. Unless you believe in the rea-
sonableness of the world it is idle to think about it
yo Reality and Monism
at all. . . . There is no use having brains without
faith and courage."
Still more impressive is the following passage,
quoted by Professor James from Benjamin Paul
Blood :
" The highest thought is not a milk and water
equation of so much reason and so much result, no
school sum to be cast up. We have recognized the
highest divine thought of itself, and there is in it as
much of wonder as of certainty ; inevitable and soli-
tary and safe in one sense, but queer and cactus-like
in another. It appeals unutterably to experience
alone. There are sadness and disenchantment for
the novice in these inferences as if the keynote of
the universe were low. Certainty is the root of
despair. The inevitable stales while doubt and hope
are sisters. Not unfortunately, the universe is wild,
game-flavored as a hawk's wing. Nature is miracle
all. She knows no laws. The same returns not,
but to bring the different. The slow round of the
engraver's lathe gains but the breadth of a hair, but
the difference is distributed back over the whole
curve, never an instance true ever not quite! "
The universe is most certainly " a going con-
cern," to use William Allen White's description of
American democracy. No man, no day, no inci-
dent has ever been here before, almost, always, but
never quite the same. Wherever we are, and in
whatever environment, we are the first of our
dynasty, " We are the first that ever burst into this
Reality and Monism 71
silent sea ! " exclaims James, after Coleridge. The
sea was silent to us, at least, and here we are in the
midst of it. It is a " going concern," and so are
we, and all this adds to our interest and lends spice
to the experiences which follow our actions, for a
good deal, to us, depends on our behavior, and we
shall not come this way again.
Fouillee is quoted as saying : " The world remains
for Science a broken mirror, while Philosophy, by
piecing together the fragments, strives to catch
glimpses of the grand image." But the " grand
image " was never more complete than now. It is
becoming ever more complete, but it will never be
finished, and science knows and philosophy may
learn that the completed picture never was and
never will be never quite !
" No one can know the future," says Voltaire,
" because no one can know that which is not."
We may conceive that in this universe of his,
even the Supreme Being may feel his way through
the intricacies of mutation, astronomical, geological,
and biological, and through all the vicissitudes of
individual free will and social clash. History is not
altogether a matter of inevitable tendencies, but in
part it is made up as it goes along. " History re-
peats itself " almost, but never quite, else it could
not hold our perennial interest. Its operations can-
not be foreseen unless they are foreordained, and
foreordination is the most hopeless and helpless of
dogmas. The leaf has its foreordained place on
72 Reality and Monism
the stem because it could not possibly have grown
anywhere else. If it could have grown elsewhere,
it would certainly have done so. Such is the ob-
stinate nature of leaves, for their insertion depends
on the nature of their buds, and the buds depend on
the inherited mode of growth of the species. But
even with all this, every leaf has a bit of originality.
Its place is almost fixed, never quite. But within
the narrow range of what we call its law, it must
confine its individuality. Almost foreordained, but
never quite. When the leaf falls it has more lati-
tude. Its affairs are not thus prearranged. The
elements are just as insistent, but their coming to-
gether is temporary. The fall of the leaf depends
on the coincidence of breeze and bacilli, and the
loosening of the leaf from its stem. That the leaf
should be devoured by bird or caterpillar is not a
matter predetermined in the same sense as the form
of the leaf is predestined, or the place it must as-
sume on the stem. These matters rest on the long
array of incidents which determine the nature of
the species of tree producing the leaf.
All these incidents, the results of the conflict or
co-operation of different forces or impulses, the uni-
verse must encounter or complete as time goes on.
They are not part of the " law before all time,"
whatever that phrase may prove to mean.
Haeckel, the most conspicuous of the scientific
apostles of monism, finds this doctrine adequate not
only to meet the demands of philosophy, but to
Reality and Monism 73
answer the questions of science. His confidence in
monism gives him equal confidence in those sci-
entific theories which he regards as derived from it,
because they seem to accord with it. These concep-
tions Haeckel calls " Articles of Faith." These
articles of faith concern matters of science which
come sooner or later within the range of human
experience, and to be stated in terms of human
action. By these tests of science the articles of
faith stand or fall. If monism belongs to science,
and these " articles of faith " are among its real
corollaries, the philosophic conception must stand
or fall with them. If monism cannot be tested
somewhere, somehow, the great generalization has
its place somewhere outside of science.
First among these postulates of monism, or
" articles of faith " in Haeckel's scheme, comes the
" essential unity of organic and inorganic nature,
the former having been evolved from the latter only
at a relatively recent period." We may admit that
organic life is relatively recent, and that inorganic
nature has existed longer. But we know nothing
whatever of how life began. Whether life is a
matter of organization and chemistry, or whether it
has an element which transcends all material forces
no one can really say. It is more easy to argue
against any special theory of mechanism or vitalism,
than to build up constructive arguments adequate
to turn the scale in favor of either. As Professor
Brooks has said, " We shall never know which of
74 Reality and Monism
these hypotheses is true until we find out." Those
who begin with the thesis that "life is nothing but
chemism " often end, as Driesch has done, with the
belief that vital force transcends chemism, and that
life is itself one of the primal forces of creation.
Those who reverse this thesis, claiming that chem-
ism includes all we know as vital force, find them-
selves obliged to shift their theory under the
pressure of facts. No view of the ultimate nature
of life is yet a finality. Only as a corollary of mon-
ism does any hypothesis as to the essence of life find
a permanent resting-place.
That monism demands spontaneous generation in
itself proves nothing. We believe without knowl-
edge when we assert that life first arose through
natural chemical action, the generation of living
from inorganic matter. Haeckel further resolves
life activity or the movement and change in proto-
plasm into properties shown by certain carbon com-
pounds under certain conditions. Life in this sense
is an " emanation of carbon," " the true maker of
life," according to Haeckel, " being the tetrahedral
carbon molecule." The "mystery of life" is,
therefore, removed by placing it one degree further
away from the known facts, with an area of pure
speculation between. Across this area, untouched
by human experience, science cannot extend itself.
In science, a position which cannot be attacked on
the basis of observation or experiment cannot be
defended. Castles in cloudland are impregnable.
Reality and Monism 75
Theories impregnable can be attacked only when
they can be verified, when they are made sufficiently
definite to be the basis of positive predictions as to
the outcome of experiments.
The long dispute as to mechanism and vitalism
cannot end in a victory of one side or the other. If
processes of life are included under " chemism,"
then " chemism " is not a perfectly simple and
transparent idea. It must include all the complex-
ities gathered together under the term vitalism.
Life is so different from anything which would be
inferred from a knowledge of the simpler phenom-
ena of chemistry or physics, that it seems to call for
special terms and special explanations. Hence the
disposition to segregate the complex phenomena of
life as vitalism. But chemical forces are adequate
to produce whatever effects chemical forces can be
shown to produce. " If the mystery of causal se-
quence is the same everywhere, nothing is gained
for explanatory purposes by exaggerating it at one
place and then giving it a name."
Another " article of faith " in Haeckel's system is
that of the identity of matter and force. Neither ap-
pears without the other. But we know likewise that
the inside of a sphere never appears without the
outside, or the peach without the skin, the melon
without the rind. Therefore, in each case we might
argue that the two are identical. In a large sense
they are, but not in all senses.
More directly subject to scientific tests is
j6 Reality and Monism
Haeckel's claim that all chemical substances are
really one, all being derived from the supposed
primitive substances, protyl. Monism further de-
mands, according to Haeckel, the evolutionary unity
of all life. Still more explicitly, it demands belief
in the inheritance of acquired characters in the
process of heredity.
Now all these theories may be true, but until they
have borne the test of action, they are not yet true.
It is not clear that science is advanced by making
them matters of " pious belief " or " articles of
faith," before they are proved through observation
and experiment.
That all ponderable matter is of one primitive
stuff may be the fact. Already the atom has been
subdivided into minor units. Already some forms
of matter change their nature under spontaneous
activity, appearing as something very different.
But gold remains gold and hydrogen remains hy-
drogen, and most forms of matter seem neither sub-
ject to radio-active change, nor to any other form
of evolution. To all tests of science there is still
an impassable gap between platinum and oxygen,
between radium and iron, between potassium and
carbon, or even between potassium and the very
similar substance or neighbor, sodium. Affinities,
resemblances, and parallelisms exist, but we have
nowhere among these elements found identity of
substance nor identity of origin. Science cannot
bridge these chasms, until a bridge is made. If we
Reality and Monism 77
cross over, without a bridge, it must be by some
means outside of science.
In a general way, men have found out that the
processes of nature are more complex than men
in earlier times had supposed, while the elements
concerned in these processes are often more simple.
But this generalization goes no further than the
facts go. Science stops where the facts stop, and
speculation cannot safely proceed any farther. To
every test human experience has devised, chemical
substances retain their nature, their ultimate par-
ticles being unchangeable as well as indestructible.
Therefore, to speak of these as forms of one
substance is to go beyond knowledge. Science
does not teach this. But the idea may be plausible,
or even logical, as a conception of philosophy,
It is quite conceivable that by some combina-
tion of primitive units, the variant chemical atoms
are formed. Recent investigation may even tend
in this direction, however far it may be from reach-
ing the supposed final goal. If this conception be
really truth, it must, sooner or later, be carried out
into action. Lead may then be resolved into its
primitive elements, and these elements may be re-
united in the form of gold. " The dream of one
age " is said to be " the science of the next," and
when lead is really transmuted, the dream of the
alchemist will become fact. Yes, but not until
then, and this is the most important phase of the
matter. Such transmutation is as yet no part of
78 Reality and Monism
knowledge. That it may seem probable or likely,
or to have logical continuity with other generaliza-
tions, gives it no standing in science. The spec-
ulation on which it rests is a bold one, overbold
and, therefore, at present useless.
The essential unity of life has some claim to be
called a fact of science, for it can be in part
inductively verified. The derivation of existing
forms from pre-existing species through processes
of divergence and adaptation is as nearly established
as truth as any generalization can be. By the
operation of variation in heredity, and variation
with heredity, with the sifting of the environment,
life has been split up into countless strains. By the
process of selection, those strains fitted to the en-
vironment have survived, and by means of geo-
graphical and other separation, countless variations
have survived in parallel series.
Again, Haeckel claims that, as an article of faith,
monism demands belief in spontaneous generation.
This theory has been the subject of numberless ex-
periments, none of thern, perhaps, finally conclusive.
They yield negative results, and a negation rarely
puts a final end to any conception. On the face of
things, spontaneous generation, like the transmuta-
tion of metals, seems reasonable enough. It seems
less reasonable when we get close to the facts. The
one idea has been the will-o'-the-wisp of biology, as
the other has been of chemistry. We know of no
case in which spontaneous generation can possibly
Reality and Monism 79
have occurred. We know nothing of how if
ever non-life becomes life. So far as our experi-
ence goes, so far as science can see or feel, genera-
tion from first to last is a continuous series all life
from life. We can devise no conditions under
which spontaneous generation takes place, or in
which it seems likely to most of us that it can take
place. If spontaneous generation should take place
we should have no way of knowing it. All the or-
ganisms we know have had a long history. Even
the simplest moneron shows traces of a long an-
cestry, of long-continued cell-subdivision, a long ex-
posure to natural selection, of many concessions to
environment. We know of no living organism that
does not show abundant traces of such concessions.
We know of no way by which adaptation or obedi-
ence to demands of environment has been produced
save by the long-continued selection of the adapt-
able. We know of no organism that does not show
large homologies with a multitude of other kinds or
species of organisms. We know of no source of
homology save blood-relationship. The analogies
point toward the origin of all life from one common
stock, a single generation or a single individual.
All this would show, not that spontaneous genera-
tion is impossible, but that we have, as yet, no con-
ception as to the conditions of any of its occur-
rence. If living organisms now appear otherwise
than by a process of cleavage of unit of energy from
some living organism, the casting- off of a germ-
80 Reality and Monism
cell, if living structures fresh from the mint of
creation are now developed from matter not living,
we should have no possible means of recognizing
them. They would be so simple that we could not
detect their living nature. They would doubtless
be so small that we could not find them. They
would consist, we may suppose, each of but a small
number of molecules, perhaps but two or three. If
there is truth in the suggestion of Lord Kelvin that
a molecule in a drop of water is as small as a
marble in comparison with the earth, we should
have no way of searching for such creatures. If
we cannot find them, we cannot know that they ex-
ist. If we do not know that they exist, shall we
believe that they do? Or is it better, as Emerson
suggests, that men should not " pretend to know
and believe what they do not really know and be-
lieve"?
It may be that the fact that life now exists on
the world and that geology seems to show that its
condition was once such as to make life impossible,
implies " spontaneous generation " as a logical neces-
sity. If there was a beginning of life, some form
of beginning was doubtless a " logical necessity."
But this " logical necessity " lies in our statement
of the case, not in nature. Logical necessity does
not compel assent until we are able to compass all
the possibilities in any given case. We know .too
little of the conditions before life appeared on the
globe to venture any guess as to how life began.
Reality and Monism 81
Doubtless it began somehow, and it had a natural
origin, that is, an origin with an adequate cause
behind it.
The heredity of inborn characters is a matter of
daily observation. The heredity of acquired char-
acters, the hypothesis of " progressive evolution,"
the inheritance from generation to generation of the
results of use and devise and the impact of en-
vironment on the individual, is another of Haeckel's
" articles of faith." But it is not one of the cer-
tainties of science. Observation and experiment
have alike failed to give it verification. That it is
an " article of faith " derived from a speculative
hypothesis lends it no probability whatever. Our
judgment must depend on the results of human ex-
perience, tested and set in order. The matter stands
exactly where it did before. It is within the realm
of human experience, and by such experience it must
be tested. If the doctrine is vulnerable to philo-
sophic weapons alone, its fate is no concern of
science.
The question of monism can have little actual
relation to science or human life. If we cannot test
the monism by observation or experiment of one
sort or another, no conclusion we reach has any
actual validity. If neither result nor method can
be woven into the conduct of life, the question
as to whether we are " monists " or " pluralists,"
or theorists of some other sort, becomes a mat-
ter of temperament or of individual preference,
82 Reality and Monism
rather than a necessity of science. Pluralism has this
advantage that it occupies the field as a working
hypothesis in line with the facts of experience, while
monism remains unproved and logically more or
less unfruitful. Pluralism, on the surface, is true,
and we deal with surfaces. " The systematic unity
of reality " is another definition or phase of mon-
ism. It is fine to believe in such systematic unity,
but it is just as satisfactory to believe the reverse,
whatever that is, for we have no way of putting
any part of its system to a test. In what way would
our universe differ if its realities, theoretically in
unity, were actually not so ?
" All realities influence our practice," Professor
James quotes from Ostwald, " and the influence is
their meaning for us. I am accustomed to put
questions to my classes in this way: In what re-
spects would the world be different if this alterna-
tive or that were true? If I can find nothing that
would become different, then the alternative has no
sense." " That is," says James, " the rival views
mean practically the same thing, and meaning other
than practical, there is for us none. Ostwald gives
this example of what he means. Chemists have
long wrangled over the inner constitution of certain
bodies called tautomerous. Their properties seemed
equally consistent with the idea that an unstable
hydrogen atom oscillates inside of them, or with
the idea that they are unstable mixtures of two
bodies. Controversy raged, but never was decided.
Reality and Monism 83
' It would never have begun,' said Ostwald, * if the
combatants had asked themselves what particular
experimental fact could have been made different
by one or the other view being correct.' If it would
then have appeared that no difference of fact could
possibly ensue, and the quarrel was as unreal as
if theorizing in primitive times about the raising of
dough by yeast, one party should have invoked a
brownie, while another insisted on an elf as the
cause of the phenomenon."
Professor James continues : " It is astonishing to
see how many philosophical disputes (and we may
add scientific disputes as well) collapse into insig-
nificance the moment you subject them to this sim-
ple test of tracing a concrete consequence. There
can be no difference anywhere that does not make a
difference elsewhere; no difference in abstract truth
that does not express itself in a difference in concrete
fact; and in conduct consequent on that fact im-
posed on somebody, somehow, somewhere, and
some when. The whole function of philosophy
ought to be to find out what definite difference it
will make to you and me, at definite instants in our
life, if this world formula or that world formula
be the right one."
The spectroscope tells us of the compositions of
the distant stars, stars we have never seen and can
never see, stars whose light reaches us centuries
after the spreading waves of ether diverged from
the star itself. Of what practical use to us to know
84 Reality and Monism
that Zeta Draconis has hydrogen in its atmosphere ?
None, no doubt, except as a factor in the broad-
ening of our minds, the clarifying of our con-
ception of relative values in the universe. But
the methods by which this knowledge is won are in-
tensely practical. Not alone that we use the spec-
troscope as well in the manufacture of steel, but
rather that we use its methods in the affairs of
human life. The spectroscope is one of science's
instruments of precision, and precision lies at the
heart of the progress of human civilization.
Men have struggled for ages over the symbolism
of the Eucharist. Is it a matter of unity or of
identity? Is it homoousion or, perchance, only
homoiousion? Who can tell at the end of the con-
troversy any more than at the beginning? In what
way does a conclusion affect our view of the uni-
verse? In what way does it affect the conduct of
man ? It is not necessary to follow this with further
illustrations. If the motto, " nihil nemini nocet,"
" nothing hurts nobody," ascribed to a certain cult
of faith-healing, is valid, then nobody need worry
about nothing, and Science can turn her attention
to realities. For, somehow, somewhere, or some
when every reality will leave its mark on human
conduct.
Referring again to the conception of monism, sci-
ence can have no quarrel with it, except that it can
make nothing definite out of it. Monism does not
appear as a proved or partly proved or even as a
Reality and Monism 85
plausible fact, nor is it clear that it constitutes an
hypothesis which, being put to the test, will conduct
us to the things we want to know. If, when put to
the test of experiment, it yields, as inductive truths,
the scientific articles of faith associated with it, the
philosophy would be justified by its results. The-
ories of organic evolution have justified themselves
in this fashion. But thus far monism stands in a
world apart. The same is true of the conception of
pantheism, as related to the world of action. It is
not easy to conceive of monism or pantheism as be-
ing true or false. We need feel no prejudice
against either. They lend themselves to poetry.
They appeal to our emotions. In Haeckel's own
words, used in reference to conventional religious
conceptions, " Such hereditary articles of faith
take root all the more firmly the further they are
removed from a rational knowledge of Nature and
enveloped in the mysterious mantle of mythological
poesy."
It is to us as poets, rather than as men of sci-
ence, that these doctrines appeal. By and by in the
circuit of philosophic thought, the present resistance
to these ideas may be turned again into devoted
reverence for them. For none of all the philosophic
doctrine, brought down as lightning from heaven
for the guidance of plodding man, seems more up-
lifting than that of the unity of existence and the
universal presence of deity. None is less likely to
be trampled under foot in the rush of common life.
86 Reality and Monism
But shall we give these doctrines belief? Not if
we have to accept any of their corollaries or deriva-
tives on any terms except on their own particular
evidence. Haeckel recognizes clearly enough the
difference between fact in hand and fact hoped for.
He uses the term belief for " hypotheses or con-
jectures by which the gaps empirical investigation
must leave in science are filled up." " These," he
says, " we cannot, indeed, for a time establish on
a secure basis, and yet we may make use of them
in the way of explaining phenomena, in so far as
they are not inconsistent with a rational knowledge
of Nature." " Such rational hypotheses," he says,
" are scientific Articles of Faith."
Gladstone somewhere uses a parallel expression.
He speaks of certain doctrines as not yet a part
of knowledge, yet so well supported that they may
" bear the weight of belief." Belief, then, is not
what we know, but what we logically hope to
know, in view of human experiences available to us.
It would not seem necessary to take so large a
term as faith or belief for working hypotheses
confessedly unproved or transient. The phrase
" make-believe," used by Huxley in similar connec-
tion, fits the case better. As men of science we can-
not believe any hypothetic " articles of faith " not
resting on scientific induction. Dealing with my
own experience, and that of the race, I ought not
to say, " I believe," when I cannot say " I know."
I should not believe when I cannot trust. I should
Reality and Monism 87
put off the livery of science when I enter the abode
of the Delphian Oracles.
That those " articles of faith " named by
Haeckel are necessarily derived from monism is cer-
tainly open to doubt. Monism as a philosophic con-
ception can have no practical corollaries. Its conclu-
sions are all involved in its definition. If its defini-
tion involves nothing that can be tested by experi-
ment or wrought into action, it is outside the field of
knowledge. Doubtless monism would still flourish
were all its " articles of faith " disproved. If so,
it has no part in science, for science deals with
classified realities in human life. It belongs to
philosophy and to poetry, both legitimate activities
of the human mind, although not primarily con-
cerned with knowledge.
If, however, monism rests actually on human ex-
perience it must be tested by scientific methods.
Until it is so tested, however attractive or however
plausible it may seem, it has no working value.
There is no gain in giving it belief or in calling it
truth. Still less should we stultify ourselves by pin-
ning our faith to its postulates as to matters yet to
be decided by experiment, and to be settled by
human experiment only. Haeckel says, for exam-
ple : " The inheritance of characters acquired dur-
ing the life of the individual is an indispensable
axiom of the monistic doctrine of evolution. Those
who, with Weismann and Galton, deny this, entirely
exclude thereby the possibility of any formative in-
88 Reality and Monism
fluence of the outer world upon organic form."
Here we may ask: Who knows that there is any
such formative influence? What do we know of
this or any other subject beyond what, in our in-
vestigations, we find to be true? When was mon-
ism a subject of special revelation, and with what
credentials does it come, that one of the greatest
controversies in modern science should be settled by
its simple word ?
We must beware of paths to knowledge as to mat-
ters of fact, which save us the labor of inductive
verification. As Emerson observes, we should avoid
" all short cuts to truth as we would shun the secrets
of the undertaker."
Nearly all of the arguments in favor of the
heredity of acquired characters, as well as very
many of those in favor of the opposed dogma of
the unchanged continuity of the germ plasm, are
based on some supposed logical necessity of philoso-
phy. Logical necessities are valueless in the light
of fact. Desmarest once suggested to the contend-
ing advocates of Neptunism and Plutonism to " Go
and see." When they had seen the action of water
and the action of heat, as he had seen them among
the volcanoes of Auvergne, the contest was over.
Argument and contention had vanished in the face
of fact. To believe without foundation is to
discredit knowledge. Scientific " confessions of
faith " show a zeal to believe which cheapens the
power to know. Greater than the courage of one's
Reality and Monism 89
convictions may be the courage of patience where
convictions are not yet attainable.
" Science," says Richard T. Colburn, " does not
concern itself with teleological suppositions. It is
reluctant to resort to any of them to explain the
observed cosmos. It prefers to listen in neutral
attitude to the rival philosophies theism, maniche-
ism, atheism, monism, spiritism, or materialism
but it is at least equally well equipped to pass
judgment on such speculations as their advo-
cates."
Again, if we are to allow the revision of the gen-
eralizations of science by the addition of acceptable
but unverified doctrines, we must allow the right
of similar revision by rejection. Mr. Wallace, for
example, would be justified in adding to the cer-
tainties of organic evolution his idea of the special
creation of the mind of man while the body was
separately developed under natural law. The old
notion of the separate existence of the ego, which
plays on the nerve cells of the brain as a musician
on the keys of the piano, would still linger in psy-
chology. The astral body would hover on the verge
of physiology and the disembodied soul still go on
its pilgrimages to Devachan.
I have a scientific friend who finds it necessary
to exclude by force from his biological beliefs all
that is unpleasant in the theories of evolution. And
he has the same right to do this that Professor
Haeckel has to insist that any scientific beliefs, for
90 Reality and Monism
which science has yet no warrant, are a necessary
part of the orthodoxy of science.
For Haeckel, one of the greatest of teachers, a
man of fine strong personality, is sometimes a bit
dogmatic. In his treatment of monism, he is not
content to speak for himself, asking tolerance by
tolerance toward others. His belief is no idiosyn-
crasy of his own which he keeps to himself. He
speaks for all. Every honest, intelligent, cour-
ageous scientific man, he tells us, so far as he is
truthful, competent, and brave, shares the same be-
lief. His confession of faith is nothing if not
orthodox. He says :
" This monistic confession has the greater claim
to an unprejudiced consideration in that it is shared,
I am firmly convinced, by at least nine-tenths of
the men of science now living; indeed, I believe, by
all men of science in whom the following four con-
ditions are realized : ( i ) sufficient acquaintance with
the various departments of natural science, and in
particular with the modern doctrine of evolution ;
(2) sufficient acuteness and clearness of judgment
to draw, by induction and deduction, the necessary
logical consequences that flow from such empirical
knowledge: (3) sufficient moral courage to main-
tain the monistic knowledge so gained against the
attacks of hostile dualistic and pluralistic systems;
and (4) sufficient strength of mind to free himself,
by sound, independent reasoning, from dominant
religious prejudices, and especially from those ir-
Reality and Monism 91
rational dogmas which have been firmly lodged in
our minds from earliest youth as indisputable rev-
elations."
'Against such assumption science may protest.
We have nothing against the doctrines save that
they are not yet proved true. In themselves, as I
have said, they are attractive. One may naturally
feel a hopeful interest in wide-reaching theories
which seem plausible, but are still unproved or un-
workable. This is, however, not " belief." It is
rather open-mindedness, open to negative evidence
as well as to positive.
As science goes wherever the facts lead, so sci-
ence must stop where the facts stop. It cannot add
to its methods the running high jump, nor place
the divining rod with the microscope, crucible, and
calculus among its instruments of precision. Be-
yond the range of scientific knowledge extend the
working and the unworkable hypotheses. Beyond
the confines of all these extend the universe of the
mind, the boundless realm which is the abode of
philosophy. We must ask of each hypothesis : Is it
capable of being put to the test? Is it fruitful of
results when tested? If tested and fruitful, such
hypotheses belong to the category of science, and
nothing is added to their dignity or respectability
by making them into dogmas or " articles of
faith."
The primal motive of science is to regulate the
conduct of life. This is in a sense its ultimate
92 Reality and Monism
end, for it is the first and the last function of the
senses and the intellect. " Still men and nations
reap as they have strewn." The history of human
thought is filled with the rise of doctrines, laws,
and generalizations, not drawn from human experi-
ence and not sanctioned by science. The attempt to
use these ideas as a basis of human action has been
a fruitful source of human misery.
" Consistent materialism," says Dr. William E.
Ritter, " consistent idealism and occultism are one
finally in their abandonment of experimental knowl-
edge."
" Better any fragment of cerebral philosophy,"
says William Lowe Bryan, " which is true, though
by itself unable to tell what any one is to do,
than a study of human character which tells every
one what to do, but is not true."
The advances of science are all made along indi-
rect lines by the comparison and extension of ex-
periences, rarely by striking out directly toward the
final result. For no one can foretell in what di-
rection the final result may lie.
Science bids us follow the line in which our de-
finable needs for knowledge, practical and theoret-
ical, may urge us on. Conceptions thus obtained
will of necessity be livable, either as guides or as
warnings in the conduct of life. The truth is found
in the tested induction from human experience.
Other conceptions, deductions, or imaginations do
not much matter. As science advances these no-
Reality and Monism 93
tions are left along the road, impedimenta, to be
later picked up and classified by history, in whose
hands they acquire a fresh interest, as human
documents in the intellectual progress of the
race.
IV
REALITY AND ILLUSION
" Whoever will contribute any touch of sharpness will help
us to make sure of what's what and who's who." WILLIAM
JAMES.
" A few clear ideas are worth more than many confused
ones. A young man will hardly be persuaded to sacrifice the
greater part of his thoughts to save the rest, and the mud-
dled head is the least apt to see the necessity of such sacrifice.
" It is terrible to see how a single unclear idea, a single
formula without meaning, lurking in a young man's head, will
sometimes act like an obstruction of inert matter in an artery,
hindering the nutrition of the brain, and condemning its
victim to pine away in the fullness of his intellectual vigor
and in the midst of intellectual plenty. Many a man has
cherished for years as his hobby some vague shadow of an
idea, too meaningless to be positively false. He has, never-
theless, passionately loved it, has made it his companion by
day and by night, and has given to it his strength and his
life, leaving all other occupations for its sake, and, in short,
has lived with it and for it, until it has become, as it were,
flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone ; and then he has waked
up some bright morning to find it gone, clean vanished away
like the beautiful Melusina of the fable, and the essence of
his life gone with it. Who can say how many histories of
circle-squarers, metaphysicians, astrologers, and what not,
may not be told in the old German story ? " CHARLES SAN-
DERS PEIRCE.
" Better not to know so much than to know so much that
is not true." JOSH BILLINGS.
95
96 Reality and Illusion
THE word Truth is used with many different
meanings. A description of an isolated fact
is, in one sense of the word, a truth. A correct ac-
count of any sense-impression, stated in terms of
common human experience, is a truth. Again, a
truth may be a judgment of an ascertained relation
between one object and another, or it may be more
than this, an exact quantitative estimate of such re-
lation. If the relation be one of cause and effect, the
truth becomes a generalization. If the generalization
be adequately verified, involving a multitude of facts
or of truths of a lower rank, it becomes in the high
sense a truth. A truth of the higher order is of
necessity incomplete, and our statement of it must
change with increase of knowledge. It is said that
" Nature abhors a generalization " as once she used
to " abhor a vacuum." This is because she must
always add to it, showing that it is forever incom-
plete. It is of such lofty truth that Huxley ob-
serves : " New truths begin as heresies, and end as
superstitions." Men doubt the new truth at first,
because it is strange and incomplete. Later, the in-
completeness becomes their most cherished quality.
In the same vein, Ibsen remarks : " Truths are by
no means the wiry Methuselahs some people think
them. A normally constituted truth lives, let us say,
seventeen or eighteen years, at the outside twenty
years, seldom longer, and truths so stricken in years
are always shockingly thin."
Apart from these meanings of truth is the con-
Reality and Illusion 97
ception of the ultimate completed actuality of the
" Ding an Sich," the perfect truth of which we
read sometimes, but to which we never attain, and
to which no meaning can be attached.
The test of objective truth is found in the con-
duct of life. By the verification of action we may
separate truth from illusion. Every characteriza-
tion or description of reality points the way to
some line of conduct. Persistent action, based on
error, is dangerous, because it leads into unforeseen
conditions. An unforeseen condition in itself is an
evidence of inadequacy of knowledge. Every un-
known condition has its pitfalls which disappear in
the daylight of knowledge. " Truth in science,"
says James, " is what gives us the maximum possi-
ble sum of satisfactions, taste included, but con-
sistency both with previous truth and with novel
fact is always the most imperious claimant. Truths
emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts
again and add to them, which facts again create or
reveal new truth. The facts themselves meanwhile
are not true. They simply are. Truth is the func-
tion of the beliefs that start and terminate among
them." If the supposed truth does not mean some-
thing in particular, action by bringing about results
cannot afford any test of it. It evades the issue by
remaining vague. To have a definite meaning, thus
admitting of verification in action, our supposed
truth should stand as an answer to some definite
question, promoted by some definite interest of ours.
98 Reality and Illusion
This interest may be purely theoretical, or it may
have some definite purpose or utility. And the ac-
tion which tests it should have some definite pur-
pose. Activity, such as Taine imputes to the people
of Paris, that of " ants on whom pepper has been
sprinkled," will not bear " the name of action."
With conditions familiar and simple, the mind
draws conclusions, fairly correct as far as they go,
from the details given in ordinary immediate sense-
perception. We ordinarily show common sense
when dealing with the squash, and we take no risk
in following the promptings which our common-
place everyday knowledge of the squash suggests
to us. But objects more complex and of unfamiliar
character often sorely vex our common sense. To
find our way to clear comprehension and wise ac-
tion, we must ask the tested and co-ordinated com-
mon sense of the race which we call science to come
to our rescue. Our immediate misinterpretations of
the superficial aspects which objects present to us
we call illusions. False conclusions arising from
defects of reasoning we may class as delusions. The
way out from illusion or delusion alike is found in
the test of action. When the truth in any theory is
exhausted, it is no longer available in action.
In ordinary life, we are everywhere beset by il-
lusions and delusions of every grade and order.
In this chapter, we may consider some types and
instances of these, with, perhaps, a glance at the
lesson each one may teach, and a final look at the
Reality and Illusion 99
marks by which errors of perception, errors of
judgment, and resultant misdirection of action may
be detected and avoided.
One of the simplest of errors is that arising from
relative motion. You are in a railway train which
is waiting on a side track. Another train comes in
sight; its motion seems transferred to your own
train, but in the opposite direction. This motion
continues until the other train has passed. It
ceases suddenly, when you can almost feel the jolt
of its stopping. But from other observations which
you trust, you know that your own train has been
all the time at rest.
A delusion of this sort is so simple that it is
quickly corrected before it passes into action. But
we may conceive of conditions under which even
this would have its dangers. Let us look at some
others. The story is told of a merchant who,
smacking his lips over a glass of brandy, said to his
clerk : " The world looks very different to t'he man
who has taken a good drink of brandy and soda in
the morning." " Yes," said the clerk, " and he
looks different to the world, too." Now, which is
right? Is the world different that it looks
brighter? The test is found in action, perhaps in
the muddled outcome of not taking the world as it
really is.
Ambrose Bierce tells the story of a man who vis-
ited a naturalist in San Francisco, and remained
over night as a guest. The naturalist was a student
ioo Reality and Illusion
of living snakes. When the visitor retired at night
he looked under his bed and saw a great coiled
serpent, who watched him with glittering eyes. It
is believed that a snake's eye has a wonderful power
of fascination. Such it proved in this case. For
in the morning the naturalist found his guest dead,
kneeling on the floor, his open eyes staring in hor-
ror at the thing under the bed. This thing was
the stuffed skin of a blacksnake with two shoe-
buttons for eyes. It was suggestion, not the
serpent, which had charmed him to his death.
A ship once landed on a little palm-belted island
in the Pacific Ocean. Its passengers brought with
them the materials for a house, which they set up,
to the surprise of the natives, who had never seen
a wooden house before. They put in it blankets
and cooking utensils, and, after a day or two, they
set up near the house on a solid foundation a long
tube through which they gazed by turns at the sun.
After watching the sun for a single day, they hastily
returned to the ship, carrying the long tube and the
blankets, but leaving the house and, apparently,
everything else of value on the island. The de-
lighted natives took possession of the house, and
they hold it to this day. And they look in vain for
the return of the foolish people who left it there.
Some time after this, on the granite coast of
Labrador, the same thing happened again, but with
this variation, that the tube the men looked through
seemed to dim the sun. When everything was in
Reality and Illusion 101
place, the sun, little by little, grew dark, and was
hidden, as if by a lid drawn over it, for the space of
an hour. Then the cover was slowly drawn away.
The sun came out as before. Thereupon the men
went back into the ship, carrying the tube with
them, but leaving their house and almost everything
else they had brought. And the people took pos-
session of the house. But nothing in particular
happened afterwards, save that the air grew hazy
with the smoke of burning forests.
Along the coasts of Sinaloa in Mexico people are
engaged in digging for buried treasures under the
direction of a certain woman in San Francisco.
She has never been in Mexico herself, but she is
reputed to have the power of seeing clearly remote
or hidden objects in any part of the earth. There is
an old legend current which tells that a pirate ship,
hard pressed by the Mexican soldiers, landed on
the Cape of Camarron near Mazatlan, where the
buccaneers hastily buried a vast treasure of silver,
after which they all fled. A certain man is engaged
to-day in boring a tunnel into solid lava to find the
treasures thus laid away. This woman, in a shabby
Sacramento Street boarding-house, claims to see the
inner secrets of the mountains, and directs all these
operations. For this, we may assume, she is duly,
doubtless adequately, paid. But what will be the
reward of the man who digs the tunnel?
A man takes a forked rod of witch-hazel, and,
going over a tract of land, feels the fork twist
IO2 Reality and Illusion
downward at a certain point. There he digs and
finds a well of living water. If there is much water
the rod will turn the more vigorously or even turn
the other way. Another man uses the same rod
and finds coal, iron, gas, or building stone what-
ever he may seek. To do this he has only to at-
tach to the branch of the rod a small fragment of
that which he would seek. Thus a dime, if one
seeks for silver, a five-dollar gold piece if one looks
for gold. In California, where there is no witch-
hazel, the mountain willow serves the purpose best,
because there is " water in its make-up." But even
the madrono or the azalea can be used in an
emergency. A man once tried to bore for gas on
a certain tract of land in southern Indiana. He en-
gaged an operator with a witch-hazel rod. But the
wizard, finding the territory too large to be gone
over step by step, makes a little rod, parlor size,
and, taking the map of Vanderburg County, in
which the city of Evansville lies, goes over it with
the instrument. The result is just as satisfactory.
The rod indicates a point on the map, the well is
bored in accordance with the rod's directions.
Plenty of gas is found, and this is held to prove
the accuracy of the method. As Lord Bacon once
observed, " men mark when they hit, but never
when they miss."
Now that radium is discovered the witch-hazel
rod becomes the chosen medium of radio-activity.
By its influence buried cities are now discovered as
Reality and Illusion 103
well as hidden streams of water. What of the man
who tries to divine the material of which a star
is made? Taking a tube of metal with lenses
and prisms of glass, he turns it toward the star.
Speedily, by means of lines and streaks on the
prism, he gets his answer, and the composition of
a vast sun, so far away that the light which left it in
the days of Caesar has never yet reached us, he de-
scribes with confidence. Then, turning his tube
on the Pole Star, he finds that it is made of two
stars, one a great sun which we can see, and the
other a smaller sun which we have never seen, and
which we can never see. What of all this? If the
spectroscope tells the truth where it speaks in such
bold fashion, may we not trust the witch-hazel,
too, with its more modest claims?
An astronomer traces the course of a far-off
planet and finds that its orbit bends a little from a
perfect ellipse. From this he concludes that an-
other planet must be coming near it and attracting
it. He sets to work to determine the size of this
other planet, and the place in which it ought to be.
Having finished his calculation, he turns the tele-
scope toward this place, and the expected planet is
there. If the mathematician, through his instru-
ments, be thus sensitive to far-off matter in infinite
space, may not the clairvoyant, through her sensitile-
projectile astral body, be equally sensitive to a mass
of silver?
Once in a trance a finely organized adept or
IO4 Reality and Illusion
" medium " wandered in her astral body through
the open belt where the souls of the planets wan-
der at will. While there, she heard the comet-
shriek, the cry of a lost planet soul, " the most ter-
rible sound that rings through the heavenly spaces
of the zenith." Is not her testimony to be received
with that of the others who have traversed the mys-
teries of the abysses of space?
From shore to shore across the Atlantic Ocean
runs a metallic cable. By means of electric bat-
teries, magnets, and sparks, a message is conveyed
from one end of this cable to the other. Messages
have been sent so many times that the most skeptical
cannot doubt the fact. By such means a wanderer
in any part of the world may be found and called
home, or, if need be, sent still further on. Most of
us have seen this done and all have heard of it.
Because it has grown familiar it seems real to us,
and its mystery is dissipated. But why use the
metallic cable at all? What occult power lurks in
metal ? Why must we work always on the material
plane? Why not use the air? And, indeed, the
air has been used, and with wonderful success. The
air is full of marconigrams, and the " grams " or
messages from Poulson's latest invention, the
creatures of wireless telegraphy and wireless teleph-
ony. But why should we stop here? Why not
use the invisible ether, along which so many forms
of energy are propagated? Indeed, why not use
the boundless sympathy of life? In southern Eu-
Reality and Illusion 105
rope there is a large species of snail which runs up
and down the cabbages, feeding on their leaves.
Like other snails, it is very fond of its mate. At
least, it is so claimed by its promoters. It, too,
has been used in telegraphy. Leave your sweet-
heart in Italy when you come back home, but leave
her with a large piece of cardboard and take another
like it for yourself. On each of these write a num-
ber of sentences of sentiment and affection quota-
tions from the poets, the finest possible to your
literary taste, Browning, Tennyson, Wordsworth,
or the latest topical song any of these will do.
Then take for yourself one of a devoted pair of
snails, leaving the other with her. At an agreed
moment (standard time, making allowance for dif-
ferences of longitude) place your snail upon the
card and she will do the same with hers. Your
snail will creep to any sentiment you choose as you
direct it. Hers, left free to move about at will,
follows the same course its mate has chosen. Thus
the fondest messages can be sent across the ocean.
The last word of the snail in America, " All's well,"
or " Non ti scordar di me," can be made to echo
sweetly on a far-off shore. Here we have the Para-
silenic Telegraph, no invention of the present
writer, but the actual work of an ingenious " psychic
adept."
But why use the snails? Surely their cold slimy
bodies are not more forceful than the throbbing
heart and eager brain of man. Surely they are
io6 Reality and Illusion
not more sensitive than his astral form. Let the
snails go. They belong to the crude beginning of
astral science. You have only to sit in your room
alone in darkness, and by intense thought and ir-
resistible volition you may set the whole ether of
the world in palpitation with your dreams and de-
sires.
To your thought the " sensitive " you love will
respond. Her astral brain will register your ether
throbs. " It is my wish " : that is enough for her.
But you can do more than that, if we may trust the
records, already published. Your own astral body
may be sent across the ocean on the tremulous ether
and it will appear to her in her dreams or as part
of her realities. While the absence of this body
may be a slight inconvenience to you, for you must
sleep or suffer while it is gone, it will be a source
of joy to her. It may plead your cause for you in
a way which protoplasmic bodies can never imitate.
That this is not imagination or illusion we have
abundant testimony, if the word of man unverified
by instruments of precision is convincing to you.
Thoughts and ideas, we are told, may be " impressed
on consciousness in solid chunks without waiting
for words or clicks or other means of expression, or
for a lightning train to convey them," and there
are hundreds of records to show how this is done.
Stranger things than this are happening every day,
and we think nothing of it. Messages fly through
the air, to be recorded on sensitive instruments of
Reality and Illusion 107
precision. Even the very words themselves can
be caught and brought to life, the very sounds be-
ing reproduced.
But you do not stop with the expression of your
power over the ether and the astral messages it is
the function of the ether to carry. You may exert
control over matter itself. Mind is matter's king.
Matter is the vassal of mind. Then under the force
of mind, matter will change or vanish. Recent ex-
perimenters claim that by gazing at a photographic
plate in the dark, an impression can be made on it.
This is the mind flashing out through the human
eye. Then whatever is in this " mind's eye " should
appear on the sensitive plate of the camera. But
greater deeds than these were done long ago, and
to my mind they are told in records better authen-
ticated. The sages relate that Odin wished to se-
cure the golden mead of the giants that men might
drink it and be strong as they. After great labors
he came to where the mead was kept. He found
that the giant Suttung had concealed it in a great
stone house, to which he could get no key. So
Odin and his friend the giant Bauge sat down be-
fore the house and gazed at its walls all day. Thus
they made a small hole in the rock through which
Odin entered by changing himself into an angle-
worm, and carried the golden mead away in tri-
umph.
There was once a California nurseryman who had
a good business and was making money, as the
io8 Reality and Illusion
phrase is. So he put aside all the fruit trees which
would sell and devoted himself to making others
which would not. Each year he trimmed his plums
and apricots and lilies and poppies, taking away
the pollen which nature had provided, and putting
it on flowers to which it did not belong. Each year
he planted thousands of seeds of many kinds, and
when the plants came up, he pulled up nearly all
of them and burned them in a great bonfire. Mean-
while he made no money, and lost little by little all
that he began with. Then men began to see that all
fruits and nuts and flowers changed under his
hands. The plums grew very large and very juicy,
red, blue, and white, and more on the tree than
men had ever seen before. The lilies and the pop-
pies and all the other flowers grew larger, the cac-
tus lost its thorns and the onion its odor, the chest-
nut bore its fruit with its second crop of leaves,
and all things which he touched turned into some-
thing handsomer or with finer fruit. And every
year he pulled up almost everything in his garden
and cut down almost everything in his orchard, and
laid all in windrows of which he made great bon-
fires. And foolish people, seeing his work, tasting
his fruit, called him a wizard, and came from far
and near to see him wave his magic wands.
But there were some who saw in his operations
merely science in action, the working out by man
on a small scale of the operations which on a
large scale the scientific men know as selection
Reality and Illusion 109
and segregation of the products of variation and
heredity.
On an island in Alaska, known as Etolin, a good
man established himself some fifteen years ago, to
risk his fortune on a law of salmon life which he
regarded as a conclusion of science. The facts are
as follows : The red salmon of the Pacific are
hatched in the streams above the lakes. Spending
their first summer in the lakes, they run down to the
sea, remaining there until they are mature at four
years old. Then they ascend the streams again, and
cast their spawn in the brooks above the original
lake. After once spawning all of them die. These
statements are all accepted matters of fact, the object
of a thousand observations. But to these laws of
salmon life, this man added one more: Each salmon
returns to the actual stream where it was actually
hatched. Fishermen believe this, and the return of
thousands year by year to the same place seems to
substantiate it.
So this man on Etolin Island reasoned to himself
in this way. The rivers of Etolin have no red
salmon. They are barren streams. This is because
no red salmon have been born there. I will gather
salmon spawn to stock these rivers, and I shall
be made wealthy by the return of the salmon. I
cast my bread upon these waters, and after four
years it will return. Four years he waited, each
year stocking the Etolin streams anew. In four
years no salmon came. He was sure of the story
no Reality and Illusion
of their homing, so he changed his theory as to
their time of maturity. It must be five years, six
years, seven years, ten years, instead of four. And
the fish hatchery on Etolin remains, and the Etolin
streams are barren still. There are no lakes on the
Etolin streams, and we know that the red salmon
never runs where it will find no lake. The home-
coming of the salmon seemed to the good man on
the island as sure a conclusion of science as their
four-year period of maturation. Who shall now
decide, since these conclusions have thus met at
cross-purposes, which of them was the mistake?
Who shall say that the time is ripe for a decision?
There was once an old white-haired man who
came to an assemblage of scholars in the city of
Bloomington, in Indiana, bringing with him two
bars of wood connected by bands of iron. Fifty-
three years before he had left his home on the bay
of Quinte, in Ontario, to show these bars to the
world and to give to mankind what it never had be-
fore, control over " The Unconditioned Force of
the Universe." This force through this little ma-
chine would " revolutionize human industry, econ-
omize human labor, and relieve human want."
" Gentlemen," said the old man, " I gave up the
free and easy life of the Canadian forests, I sought
my home among the dwellers of cities, I have sacri-
ficed fifty-three years of my life upon the altar of
my desire to benefit mankind. In three weeks more
my invention will be perfected, and through these
Reality and Illusion in
bars the unconditioned force of the universe will
do its works for you and for me. The time has
gone by," he said, " when the recognition of my
principle would have pleased my ambition. I love
my race, and I wish to do them good." Two years
more went by, the unconditioned force lacked but
a few days just one more week of accomplish-
ment, and in that week the old man died in the
poorhouse of Monroe County, Indiana, and in the
dust and cobwebs in an attic of a neighboring col-
lege the model of the machine to be controlled by
the unconditioned force of the universe still awaits
the touch which for the first time shall make it
run. There were some who called the old man a
" wizard," and some a " philosopher," and because
fame has forgotten his name, I speak it here Rob-
ert Havens. And in both these cases, and in all
cases, what is our test of truth?
Not long ago, on the plains of Texas, by order
of the government of the United States, tons of
gunpowder were exploded. A great noise was
made, the smoke arose to the skies, and then all
was as before. The purpose of this was to pro-
duce rain under conditions in which common sense
said rain was impossible. While these conditions
remained there was no rain, but the wisdom of the
experiment has the official stamp of the United
States. Who shall say that it was not wise
that the experiment should not be tried again, and
yet again?
H2 Reality and Illusion
A few years ago, as I remember, some enterpris-
ing men had bought the dry bed of a river in
southern California. It is filled with winter floods
in the rainy season, while in summer it is white with
granite sand and barren stones. At best its bowl-
ders can only produce a scant growth of chaparral
and cactus. Yet when it was announced that a
city was to be built on this land, men grew wild at
the thought. All night they stood in the streets
of Los Angeles, each to take his turn in buying its
town lots. The sense of great wealth was in the
air, and even the wisest were carried away by it.
The " millionaire of a day " exerts a fascination
on his brother millionaires, akin, perhaps, to the
charming of a snake. An " obsession " comes from
within, not from without.
In Orange County, in California, there is a re-
ligious sect which finds the old Bible of our race,
the Bible of Moses and Job and Jesus and Paul,
an outworn book, no longer fitted for the aspira-
tions of man. This Bible is still tinctured with the
gospel of selfishness, for it recognizes private own-
ership of land, and goods, and men. " To honor
thy father and mother " implies special ownership
of them, and the higher life demands that there
should be no respect of persons. There can be no<
personal claims of any sort if all are to be as
" angels in heaven." Its command " thou shalt not
covet thy neighbor's goods " implies the neighbor's
ownership of material things, a relation which must
Reality and Illusion 113
degrade all who submit to it. " To render unto
Caesar the things which are Caesar's " is an outworn
recognition of powers that be but which ought not
to be. Clearly a new bible is needed, and one of
the members of the sect sat down by a typewriter
(presumably not his own property) and wrote a
bible. It was not his own composition, but that of
the Almighty, for the writer simply lent the hands
with which divine power did the work. As his
fingers played over the Remington keys, he thought
of anything or everything except his writing. The
result was the book of Oahspe, the Bible of this new
dispensation, the story of the lords of Atmospheria
and their struggles with the greater kings and fates,
to which all men and lords are finally subject. And
in the long run the Fates get the better even of the
kings. And the name of the book arose natu-
rally. One looks up to Heaven, and he says " Oh,"
then he looks down to earth and says, " Ah," and
between Heaven and earth is Spirit, Oahspe!
In the City Park of San Francisco is the wooden
image of some monstrous creature carved by the
Indians of Queen Charlotte Sound to express some
phase of their mystic devotions. This image was
stolen by a Norwegian sailor. Its makers resented
its loss by a series of incantations so horrible that
they took effect in the image itself. The idol came
to San Francisco, bringing sickness, shipwreck, or
failure to all who touched it. Even now, while it
rests on a shelf in the Park Museum in apparent
U4 Reality and Illusion
quiet, its evil power is shown at night in the
smashing of vases and the overturning of bottles.
Something of this kind takes place whenever the
image is left unguarded. A man who had charge
of it for some time avers that one night the creature
rose up in living form and seized him in its
clutches, and only by the most violent efforts could
he make his escape.
The daily papers announce that Madame de Silva,
a prophetess and seer of visions, seventh daughter
of a seventh daughter, born with a caul, is pre-
pared to diagnose all diseases from the examination
of a lock of hair; Wong Chang, the Chinese doc-
tor, is prepared to do the same without the hair
and asking no questions. How does this differ
from the power of Cuvier to draw a bird from a
single claw, or that of Agassiz, who could restore
a whole fish from one scale?
There is said to be a great law of human society,
called the " Law of Equal Access." Because man
must live by the products of the soil, and because
the earth is the sole source of wealth, all men
should, in justice, have an equal access to this
source of wealth. To this end, all private owner-
ship of the soil should be abolished, must be abol-
ished, and, with it, poverty and all its train of evils
will be abolished also. The best way to do this is
apparently to throw all burdens of taxation on the
rent of landed property, for thus all privately ac-
cruing land values may be pressed out of existence.
Reality and Illusion 115
Then any man could help himself to the earth
in such measure as might please him, knowing that
whether with much or little, he would, so long as
he should pay his tax, be working his fellows no
inequity by his private occupation. But there
are immense differences among soils, as to pro-
ductivity and availability, which make their rentals
differ. In putting the theory to the test of action
it also appears that there are like differences, and
as great, among men. With some the earth smiles
and puts forth a thousand fold. With others, not
even a stalk of corn or a thicket of weeds can be
made to grow. The trees which depend solely (as
man does not) on immediate access to the soil, never
yet have developed a law of equal access to it. The
more favoring are the conditions for the law of
equal access, the further seems the law from actual
achievement. There are some who, thinking of these
things, declare that there is in fact no such law
of equal access, and that the earth belongs to him
who can hold it and can coax it to its highest pro-
ductiveness. And there are still others who say that
any law is only an expression of what is, because if
it could have been anything else it would have been
so. And in the view of men of this sort all social
institutions must change and pass away, for the so-
cial structure is but a complex of the individual men
that make it up. By what test, then, shall we judge
this law of equal access as a cure for poverty?
It is claimed by many good men that " all men
n6 Reality and Illusion
are born free and equal." But this equality does
not appear in society as we know it, except pos-
sibly in the cradle, and certainly in the grave. For
this reason other good men struggle for equality
more real and far-reaching, which shall exist in that
period of life when it shall be most appreciated. To
this end, men have grouped themselves into soci-
eties where there shall be equal voice, equal enjoy-
ment, equal access to capital, equal exercise of power,
where each man shall serve according to his power,
and each man should receive according to his needs.
But that in the struggle of life thus far these soci-
eties, one and all, have gone down this we must
concede. Equal voice is found only among the
dumb, equal enjoyment only among the joyless,
equal power only among the powerless, equal ac-
cess to capital only among the hopelessly im-
pecunious. In human experience, to render to each
man according to his needs demands a very rigid
objective decision as to what these needs legitimately
may be. To give all men an equal voice in this
matter is to fill the air with unclassified vocifera-
tions. No man ever had his needs supplied with-
out needing a little more. Even the hermit in the
desert caring only for piety will yearn for more.
On the other hand, such is human nature, some
men will rather talk than work, and in all com-
munities in which individual effort is merged in
social responsibility, a few do all the work. The
rest, according to their license, fall short of doing
Reality and Illusion 117
according to their power. When drones and work-
ers have equal access to the honey cells, the drones
at last make way with most of the honey. Among
men not bees under such conditions one by one
the workers leave their work to swell the ranks
of the drones.
It is certain that the abolition of poverty means
the happiness of the people. If all men should do
two hours of productive work each day, poverty
would be abolished. What, then, more natural
than for a few hundred kindred spirits to stand to-
gether to work for this beneficent end? If in one
community poverty could be abolished, why not in
all others? If we say that human nature is the gate
that shuts us out of heaven, is it not evident that
human nature is itself the product of conditions?
Is it not our poverty that makes our dispositions
poor? When it is said that "poor folks have poor
ways " must we not answer that these ways will be
changed when poor folk cease to be poor?
Admitting the failure of any particular venture
in co-operative life, with all for all, and nothing for
the individual which all do not share, we may ask
what does this prove ? How many New Harmonys
and Icarias and Altrurias, how many Kaweahs
and Bellamys and Brook Farms are necessary to
disprove the theory of human perfectibility
through withdrawal from competition? How
many years shall we wait at Etolin for the return
of our salmon? How do we know that some un-
n8 Reality and Illusion
known, unmeasured force may not be still in re-
serve to make a full success of our final venture?
But human life will not let us wait too long. We
must act, somehow, and do the best we can. The
answer of the centuries comes too late for us.
We must " believe and venture " and risk the
chances.
At Denver not long ago a man, with the beard
of a saint, insisted that he had the gift of healing.
A wild hermit from the plains, some called him
crazy and some called him a prophet. But the gift
he had, or seemed to have, and thousands of sick
people and well crowded around him to be touched
and healed. He could not touch them all, so he
blessed their handkerchiefs, and his power passed
over to them. Men and women whose ills gallons
of patent medicines had failed to assuage were
healed at once by these pieces of soiled cloth. And
testimonials such as they had once written for these
same medicines, they now freely wrote for him.
And wherever he went, disease vanished before
him.
But, after all, is there such a thing as disease?
Surely man " made in the image of God " is made
in the image of perfection, and what is perfect
cannot be marred or destroyed. May not disease
be the greatest of illusions? May not all pain be
a nightmare dream from which we should escape
if we were once awakened?
Many a school of healing has been based in one
Reality and Illusion 119
way or another on these propositions. In a hun-
dred different ways at a hundred different times
men and women have found that they could heal
pain by the suggestion that pain does not exist. If
pain is disease, then shall we not heal all diseases
in this way? But some say that pain is not a dis-
ease, only a warning that disease is present or
coming. Pain is the signal that something is go-
ing wrong in the mechanism of the human body.
The signal may be unnoticed, it is claimed. We
then feel no pain, but the injury remains, for it is
the cause of the pain and not the pain itself. By
persistently turning the mind away from these sig-
nals of distress sent up by the bodily organs, we
may come at last to be incapable of receiving them.
We are then free from pain, and our minds may
be filled with a sweet serenity satisfactory to our-
selves, and edifying to others. Now, in all this
what is true? Are we ill when we feel pain, well
when we do not? Or do we feel pain because we
are ill, and does the illness pass when our feeling
is gone? May it not be true that this is a danger-
ous and selfish serenity? If it does not mean the
checking of disease, but only the closing of our eyes
to its ravages, then have we really gained anything ?
To turn from pain is to turn from all outside im-
pressions. It may be claimed that to close the
mind to the information given by the senses is to
destroy reality, to make activity impossible, to cease
to do our duty in the world. This is to cease to
I2O Reality and Illusion
grow and to become a burden to our friends and a
cumberer of society. There is nothing more noble
than serenity amid trouble and distracting effort.
There is nothing more selfish than the serenity
which is bred by immunity from pain. But to many
people, existence without pain, without sensation,
and without action, represents an ideal of the soul.
It is not alone faith in a theory of disease or a
theory of non-existence which may produce this re-
sult. Faith in a celery-compound, an electric belt,
or a mud idol may produce the same sweet serenity,
the same maddening indifference to all that is real
or moving in life. The walls of certain churches in
Mexico are covered with the offerings and pictures
of those who were saved by their vows or by ap-
peals to some saint. " But where," said Lord Ba-
con, long ago, " are the pictures of those who were
lost in spite of their vows?"
It is true that to cultivate a cheerful temper, to
look on the bright side of things, to laugh when we
can, and be hopeful under all conditions, is good
for the body. The food is better assimilated, the
blood runs faster, one can do more and better
things, and come in closer relations with the realities
of life. But conversely, when one meets most man-
fully the needs of life, his pulse beats more quickly,
his brain works better, his liver gives him less
trouble, and he is naturally cheerful and hopeful.
The cheerful man does not dodge pain, he over-
comes it. He does not selfishly shrink. from reality
Reality and Illusion 121
and turn to introspection and dreaming. He faces
the world and makes it his own and takes man-
fully the pain his efforts cause or which in the
progress of life he cannot avoid.
It is possible to go much farther in the direction
of the banishment of pain through the thought that
pain does not exist. Then take more pain and it
will become at last an intense pleasure; when the
mind is in the grasp of absolute torture, it is pos-
sible for the brain to feel it as with spasms of ab-
solute delight. It is not easy to do this, but can
be produced by excessive belief in the unreality of
common things. The brain half-maddened by pain
is open to suggestions from other maddened brains
till a fierce wild ecstasy is the final result. This
fact explains the strange rites of those sects of self-
destroyers which rose in the Middle Ages, the Flag-
ellantes, the Hermanos Penitentes, and the rest.
Even yet, the last of the Penitent Brothers at San
Mateo in New Mexico in the Passion Week torture
themselves in the most revolting fashion by cruci-
fixion, whipping, and the binding of huge cactuses
on their backs. By hideous tortures they expiate in
one week their many heinous sins of the whole year.
Just as the suggestion that disease is an illusion may
conceal pain, for those who give up everything else
for healing, so does the suggestion of infinite pleas-
ure conceal for a time the most exquisite pain. But
as in the one case, the disease goes on unchecked,
so in the others, the wounds of the whip and
122 Reality and Illusion
the cactus stab remain as realities when the illu-
sion of joy has passed away.
Once men fell at the feet of saints or sprinkled
themselves with holy water or vowed their for-
tunes to charity, to escape the ravages of yellow
fever. Later they took quinine, scrubbed the floors,
whitewashed the walls, and let sunshine into dark
places. Now they hunt mosquitoes, suffocating
them in their swamps by gallons of coal oil. Which
of all these is the one right way?
" The cell is an illusion," observes Mr. William
Q. Judge. " It is merely a word. Thus it is with
the body, so it is with the earth, and with the
solar system."
" Matter rests on mind. On mind it is depend-
ent for the recognition which is its existence. Its
laws are mental channels only, the grooves into
which the thought sustaining it naturally falls.
With your own mind you can cut such grooves,
you can make such laws. Therefore do it! Would
you change the law of gravitation? Then change
it. You have but to assert yourself. If you have
the courage to try, it is nothing to remove moun-
tains."
" When one is troubled by a horrible dream,"
says another noted sciosophist, " he has only to
say: this is a dream. I will awaken. Then the
stars shine through the window, and the vision
disappears. Thus, as one moves nightmares, so
may we remove mountains."
Reality and Illusion 123
" For there is no Pain in Truth," continues
the author last quoted. " Therefore there is
no Truth in Pain. There is no Nerve in Mind,
therefore no Mind in Nerve. No Matter in
Mind, therefore no Mind in Matter. No Mat-
ter in Life, therefore no Life in Matter. No
Matter in Good, therefore no Good in Matter.
" God is the Principle " of true Science. As
there is but one God, there can be but one principle
in this Science. As there are many stars, there
must be many fixed rules for the demonstration of
this Divine Principle. . . . The Equipollence of
the Stars above and the Mind below show the awful
unreality of Evil ! "
In the year 1858, an illiterate peasant girl in the
lower Pyrenees, anaemic and neurotic, once saw in
the mouth of a cave beside the river in the pic-
turesque little city of Lourdes, a vision of the Virgin
Mary, all in white save a blue sash. The vision
directed that the cave be made a sanctuary, and that
many people should come there to pray.
Since this came into effect, the waters of the cave
have healing powers, tested by hundreds every day,
with results which have been variously estimated.
The societies for promotion bring train-loads of pil-
grims, well or ill, from all parts of the neigh-
boring nations, even from places as distant as
Lille and Valenciennes, more than 800,000 per-
sons per year coming to the cave in a single
summer.
124 Reality and Illusion
The method pursued, as seen by the present
writer, is thus described by an observer (G. Mares),
whose account in French I here translate :
" A priest is in the pulpit. . . . The songs al-
ternate with the prayers, which are cut short by
brusque supplications, uttered often with the tone
of orders, ' Seigneur, sauvez nos malades ! ' or by
tender invocations, ' Seigneur, ayez pitie de nous ! '
With a gesture, a word, a sign, the preacher en-
forces obedience on the immense company. ' Les
bras en croix ! ' ' Agenouillez-vous/ ' Prosternez-
vous ! ' ' Baisez la terre ! ' And then the arms are
raised, the knees are bent, the foreheads bowed, the
lips touch the earth. In this time, the porters for
the men, the sisters of charity for the women, un-
dress the patients and plunge them into the icy
waters of the bathing pools. During the bath the
prayers continue, warmer, more eager, louder and
higher in pitch, as though forcing Heaven to cast
down a miracle. Then a man, a woman, a child,
falls down crying : * Je suis gueri ! Je suis guerie.'
Then the ' Magnificat ' rings out, sung by ten thou-
sand voices. While helped forward by the assistants,
the one thus healed goes to the ' bureau of consta-
tation,' where the physicians question him, feel his
pulse, hear his breathing, and decide whether this
is a complete cure, an amelioration, or simply for-
getfulness of pain under the excitement of a passing
wave of feeling."
The actual miracles, it is claimed by a resident
Reality and Illusion 125
physician, amount to about one per week, and col-
lections are made for the relief of the " incurables."
Cesare Lombroso, writing of the operations of
Madame Eusapia Paladino, claims that " in the
psychological atmosphere of the medium in a trance
and by the medium's own action, the conditions of
matter are modified. Just as if the space in which
the phenomenon takes place belonged not to three,
but to four, dimensions in which . . . the law of
gravity and the law of the impenetrability of mat-
ter should suddenly fail, and the laws that rule
time and space should suddenly cease, so that a
body from a far-off point may all at once find
itself near by, and you may find a bunch of fresh-
est flowers in your coat pocket without their show-
ing any trace of being spoiled."
" Let us not be deceived by appearances," says
the occultist D'Assier. " Let us be on our guard
that, in exploring the shades, we may not take a
shade of reasoning for reasoning itself."
It is said that " Logic as well as Magic has its
Phantasmal Double, and when Truth dips wearily
under oblique suns, the two are apt to range very
far apart."
When an electric current, whatever that may be,
is passed through a glass tube from which most
of the air has been exhausted, various peculiar
phenomena are shown. There is an appearance of
bluish light, and from certain parts of the ap-
paratus peculiar rays are given off which do not
126 Reality and Illusion
appear as rays at all. Ordinary light rays pass
readily through water, glass or crystal, and we call
these objects transparent. Through wood or cloth
or stone they will not pass; hence these objects are
said to be opaque. And the rays of light may be
diverted from their course by passing at an angle
from one transparent body to another. This prop-
erty, known as refraction, is the cause of the for-
mation of images by convex transparent bodies or
lenses. But, strangely, the rays of light above
mentioned do not act like ordinary light. All ob-
jects are transparent to them, though not in equal
degree. Not being stopped by dense bodies they
are not refracted. Not being affected by lenses,
they do not produce vision in the eye. As we can-
not see them, to the eye they are not light. But
their effect on chemical decomposition is the same
as that of light. Hence, while not available for
vision, they can be used in photography. But not
being refracted, they produce no definite image on
the sensitive plate. But they may give rise to
shadows. They do not pass through all opaque ob-
jects with equal readiness. Hence to place an
opaque body between the rays and a sensitized plate
would be to cast some kind of a shadow on that
plate. The shadow means an arrest of the chem-
ical changes which are the basis of photography.
Then, if the opaque body be not in all parts of
equal density, the shadow becomes deeper in some
places than in others. This gives on the photo-
Reality and Illusion 127
graphic plate some idea of the intimate nature of
the object photographed. For the density is not
merely a matter of the surface of bodies. It per-
tains to the interior, which in an opaque object can-
not be seen, but which nevertheless may be photo-
graphed in this fashion by these peculiar rays.
This line of investigation was lately developed in
experiment by Professor Rontgen, and the strange
character of the " X-rays " or " cathode rays " is
now a matter known to every one. By means of
these non-refracting rays, shadow photographs can
be made, showing the bones of the skeleton, im-
bedded bullets, the contents of a pocket-book, or
any similar hidden object which has a nature or a
density unlike that of its containing surface. These
experiments of Rontgen have been varied and veri-
fied in every conceivable way. A wonderful my-
thology is growing up around them, to the confusion
of those who have not paid attention to the series
of experiments which made Rontgen's discoveries
simple and inevitable.
For example, in a thousand places the Rontgen
rays and the bacilli of disease are made to work to-
gether to fill the purse of the enterprising physi-
cian. The doctor examines the internal organs of
the patient with the fluorescent tubes. He finds out
how and where the germs of disease are working
their devastation. Then he turns the mysterious
X-rays upon these germs and they are checked in
their career of ruin : shrivelled up, it may be, under
128 Reality and Illusion
this marvelous light, as caterpillars shrivel on a hot
shovel. Another physician distributes his remedies
by electric wire, one end in the bottle and the other
in the mouth of the patient, miles away. Still other
physicians, wise in their generation, use the X-rays
and the microbes and the electric currents with other
mysterious agencies equally for their own profit or
comfort. Now that the X-rays have become some-
what familiar and matter of course, the still more
wonderful emanations of radium are made to do
the same things and, in a fashion, equally regard-
less of the lessons of chemistry and of physiology.
The medicine man of the Modocs by other incanta-
tions of his own calls up the microbe of disease,
which he finally spits out, a trout perhaps, or a
wood-boring grub, or a small lizard from his
own mouth. There have been occult and esoteric
methods in medicine since the first Old Man of the
Mountains learned to look wise. The rabbit's foot
for good luck, the cold potato for rheumatism, cel-
ery for the nerves, and sarsaparilla for the blood,
are typical methods as old as humanity. But quack-
ery and pretense do not diminish our debt to hon-
est medicine and surgery, however much it may
tend to obscure it.
Some one asked Dr. Mesmer, the great apostle of
animal magnetism, which was the form taken by
" faith cure " in the last century, why he ordered
his patient to bathe in river water rather than in
well-water. His answer was that " the river water
Reality and Illusion 129
was exposed to the sun's rays." When further asked
what effect sunshine had other than to warm the
water, he replied : " Dear doctor, the reason why all
water exposed to the rays of the sun is superior to
other water is because it is magnetized since
twenty years ago I magnetized the sun ! "
Benjamin Franklin, writing in praise of life in
the open air, once said:
" It is recorded of Methusalem, who, being the
longest liver, may be supposed to have best pre-
served his health, that he slept always in the open
air; for when he had lived five hundred years an
angel said to him : ' Arise, Methusalem, and build
thee an house, for thou shalt live five hundred years
longer.' But Methusalem answered and said : ' If
I am to live but five hundred years longer it is not
worth while to build me a house; I will sleep in
the air as I have been used to do.' '
A critic said that nowhere in the sacred records
could this narration be found. An obvious re-
joinder was that this did not matter, if the story
was true. Was the story true? And does it mat-
ter?
Through the Middle Ages experimenters of
all grades were engaged in the task of finding the
means by which base metals could be transmuted
into gold. It was possible in the chemical labora-
tory to do many things which seemed equally dif-
ficult, and, to the common mind, far more mysteri-
ous. In the philosophy of the day, and, perhaps, in
130 Reality and Illusion
our own time as well, there was every reason to be-
lieve that the transmutation of metals was possible.
But it never was accomplished, and many a learned
alchemist went to his grave, the work of his life
a confessed failure.
Yet this very day, the daily press gives the rec-
ord of successful alchemy. One famous metal-
lurgist of world-wide reputation (all these men
have a " world-wide reputation " with one another)
has subjected silver to great pressure till it be-
comes yellow, soft, and heavy, just like gold. All
the difference is in the density 16 to I. Con-
densed silver is gold, so the newspaper maintains,
and the problem of alchemy is solved at last. By
these experiments six ounces of silver make but
four ounces of gold, one-third of the substance be-
ing somehow lost in the process. But with im-
proved appliances the third should be saved and the
finances of the world may be reconstructed on a
basis of genuine bimetallism, gold being made when
wanted from the condensation of silver. Yet all-
important as this discovery should be, neither chem-
istry nor finance pays any attention to it. Wall
Street is not disturbed by shadows; neither is sci-
ence. Common sense demands that the experi-
ments be verified and the steps which led to them
be made known before considering for a moment
the probability that there is any truth in a wander-
ing rumor of the daily papers.
A writer on the fruitful topic of Reincarnation
Reality and Illusion 131
has traced the ego or soul of Alexander the Great,
from its first incarnation in the wilds of Tartary,
to the Jewish adept, called Jeusu, thence to Alex-
ander, Alaric, Charlemagne, Edward the Black
Prince, Henry VIII, a Cornish fisherman, an
African King, a Staten Island carpenter, a Har-
vard Senior, and an explorer in the Pennine Alps.
His soul, ripening in 1893, had reached to a hermit
guide in the Adirondacks, thirty generations in
all from crudity to relative perfection, with " but
one necessary experience, that of womanhood, yet
to undergo."
" Up to a certain point," continues this in-
vestigator, " souls develop as wild vegetation does,
by the action of laws, external and internal, and
their own inherent instincts. Then, as a gardener
takes a wild crab-tree, prunes, cultivates, trains,
nourishes, plants its seeds in different soils, until
he has a fine fruit, good for human use, so the
gods take a soul and prune it until it is fit to nour-
ish by example and precept the souls of other men,
and to pass by our earth to other planets.
The soul of Alexander, on leaving the body of
Henry VIII, passed under the immediate care of
the gods, and the fourth stage of its existence be-
gan the phase of purification. For as fruit may
rot because of too much sunshine, so may soul.
And all rot must be purged away." But a leaf
rots, through the life and energy of its concealed
bacteria. Nothing, as we now believe, can decay
132 Reality and Illusion
of its own force. Can there be bacilli hidden in the
tissues of reincarnated souls? Is the hypothesis
of souls rotting too vague and too remote, there-
fore from verifiability to be considered as a serious
hypothesis at all? Perhaps the above instance may
remind us, that one of the most prolific sources of
error lies in the confusion of analogy with homol-
ogy, of fleeting or incidental resemblance with fun-
damental identity. Because a certain likeness in
form or function may appear, it is inferred that
like similarities may exist in those matters which
do not appear. Such reasoning forms a large part
of most discussions of politics and theology. It is
likewise not unknown in science. For example, a
well-known investigator writes from the University
of Cambridge:
" Inert matter has in truth more life than has
been ascribed to it. It is by a process of sifting
out, or, in other words, by Natural Selection, that
life, as we know it, has been evolved. The evolu-
tion is in the assortment of monads. The tendency
throughout nature is towards harmony, but there
does not seem to have been pre-established harmony.
Nay, rather, everything seems to have been hig-
gledy-piggledy, and to be gradually settling down.
When there is harmony among monads there is
good; when there is discord there is evil."
"If you will carry the left hind foot of a rabbit
in your lower vest pocket, you will have luck all
your days." When the Klondyke fever was at its
Reality and Illusion 133
height, Dr. Fletcher B. Dresslar tells us, " a miner
wrote back to his father in this wise: ' If you and
the boys can kill any rabbits up in the hills send the
feet to me, and I will dispose of the lot in round
figures. I never saw men try to press their luck
as they do here. A gambler arrived from St. Louis
over the Dalton trail, and, knowing that he would
find other gamblers, he brought along a dozen rab-
bits' feet, and sold out the lot for $50 each.' " The
belief in the luck of a rabbit's foot goes with this
ancient maxim : " When cold chills run down your
back, it means that a rabbit is silently running over
your grave."
One Sunday a gambler at Monte Carlo found his
way to the English Church in the vicinity, and upon
hearing the number of the hymn announced, was
" impressed with the feeling " that this was a
" lucky number " to bet on, and immediately left
the church for the gambling table. He staked
heavily on this number and won. Following up
the suggestion, he went to church the next Sun-
day and remained long enough to get the number
of the hymn announced, staked on it, and won
again. Upon confiding the secret of his success
to his friends, they, too, went to church. The con-
tagion spread, until the exodus after the hymn be-
came so marked that the rector was painfully con-
scious of it, and, on learning of the cause, took oc-
casion to protect himself, and the good name of his
church, by announcing from his pulpit that in the
134 Reality and Illusion
future no hymn whose number was less than 37
would be selected. This number was designated
because on the roulette table the highest number is
36. But the strangest and most interesting thing
about this story is the fact that it is a true story.
" Superstitions," says Dr. Dresslar, " represent
in part those conclusions men have adopted to free
the mind from the strain of uncompleted thinking.
Men are naturally driven to conclusions regarding
the meaning and significance of those phenomena
which appear in their minds. There is no physi-
ological or psychological equilibrium unless the
mind comes to rest in a conclusion. It is physically
and mentally very tiring to hold in the mind a series
of conditions, and at the same time to prevent them
from shooting together into some sort of a denoue-
ment. The untrained and instinctive mind reaches
conclusions quickly, for this is temporarily the line
of least resistance. ... It may accept the generali-
zations passed down to it by tradition, for it is
easier to accept an explanation authoritatively given,
than to frame one.
" Nothing will rid humanity of superstition but
education. And this education must not stop short
of the habit of scientific method and scientific feel-
ing. A student at work in the laboratory learns
soon that Nature tells no falsehood and that her laws
are inexorable. The scientific worker nowhere has
any use for the conception of luck, and so acquires
the habit of disregarding all such superstitions."
Reality and Illusion 135
Man must learn, as Emerson tells us, that * Every
thing in nature, even motes and feathers, go by law
and not by luck, and that what he sows, he reaps.' '
Dr. Dresslar closes a wholesome chapter on Super-
stition and Education with these words : " We some-
times flatter ourselves that we have attained almost
unto freedom. But I think even a short study of
the superstitious tendencies prevalent to-day will con-
vince the most enthusiastic that we are in no little
measure still slaves to the unreason of our uncivilized
ancestry. And we shall never attain unto rational
living until we are regenerated through the gospel
of truthful learning; until we acquire the habit of
fearless investigation, persistent thinking, and cour-
ageous belief." In a similar vein, Dr. Charles Sedg-
wick Minot assures us that " the only important dif-
ference between the practical doctor and the sci-
entific doctor is that the patients of the practical doc-
tor are more likely to die." In saving bodies, and
even souls, the essential thing is to know how.
But amid all the wonders of science, non-science,
dreaming, fraud and insanity and pretense, how
shall the common man find his way ? How shall he
recognize the claims of truth among all the other
voices and noises in this vociferous world? Is not
this the answer of science, the answer of common
sense? As to many things the common man may
not know the whole truth; as to many he perhaps
need not know anything whatever. Where he is not
concerned in any way so that error and truth are
136 Reality and Illusion
alike to him, because they cannot affect his action, he
may be powerless to decide. It is not important that
he should decide. " I do not know " is the affirma-
tion characteristic of the wise man. " Never be
afraid to say I do not know," was a favorite admoni-
tion of Professor Agassiz. It is safe to believe
mildly in mahatmas and norns, in hoodoos and vou-
dous, if one does not regulate his life according to
this belief. The vague unverified faith in protoplasm,
in natural selection, or in microbes which the aver-
age man possesses, will serve him no better so long
as it remains vague and, therefore, unverifiable in
distinct sense. The difference appears when one acts
upon his belief. The nearer one's acquaintance with
molecules or protoplasm, the more real and more
natural do they appear. The soundness of our
knowledge is tested by the results of our dealings
with these things. The microbe is as authentic as
the cabbage to one engaged in dealing with it. Pro-
toplasm is as tangible as wheat or molasses. It is
possible to make these hypotheses progressively more
definite, and hence to verify them. But the astral
body and the telepathic impulse become the more
vague the nearer we approach them; as ideas or
conceptions they import no definite and identifiable
consequences to the promise of which they stand
committed, and action in pursuance of them can con-
sequently never test their truth. They are irre-
sponsible figments of the fancy, and their names
serve only as a cover for our ignorance of the facts.
Reality and Illusion 137
The charm of such words as Karma, Kismet, and
Avatar lies in the fact that most of those who use
them have no idea of what they mean. This is the
attraction of Nirvana and Devachan. If we know
not what such words mean " in terms of life," then
they have no meaning. Not being verifiable, they
are mere words, and not ideas.
Scientific induction, in its essence, is simply com-
mon sense. The homely maxims of human experi-
ence are the beginnings of science. To know
enough " to come in when it rains " is to know some-
thing of the science of meteorology. By scanning
the clouds we may know how to come in before it
rains. By observing the winds we may tell what
clouds are coming. By studying the barometer we
may know from what quarter winds and clouds may
be expected.
The discoveries of science are made by steps which
are perfectly simple to those trained to follow them.
No discovery is made by chance in our day. None
come to contradict existing laws or to discredit ex-
isting knowledge. The whole of no phenomenon
is known to man. The whole of any truth can
never be. We cannot reach truth regarding the
framework of things, unless a part of this frame-
work enters into our human experience. Science
deals with human contact and interest. The un-
known surrounds on all sides all knowledge in man's
possession. The beginning, the end, and the rami-
fications are beyond his reach. He was not present
138 Reality and Illusion
when the foundations of the universe were laid. He
may not be present when they are dissolved. But
scientific knowledge, though limited, is practical and
positive so far as it goes. Its criterion is experi-
ment and observation. Every step in observation,
experiment, or induction, has been tested by thou-
sands of bright minds, and this testing has been pos-
sible because at each step the effort was made to
formulate clearly in advance just what the experi-
ment or observation should look for. He is already
a master in science who can suggest even one new
experiment, because an experiment requires an ante-
cedent, intelligent question by which the results of
the experiment may be measured. There is nothing
occult or uncanny in scientific methods. The
" magic wand " which creates new species of horses
or cattle lies in the hand of any stock-breeder. The
magic key of the electrician, by which the foam of
the cataract becomes the light of the city, may be
held by any city council.
To take the illustrations given above : " there is
such a thing as a squash," because the assumption
that the squash exists constitutes a safe basis for
action. On that hypothesis you can plant squashes
or raise squashes or make them into pies, and this
is the sort of thing we mean when we say the squash
exists. The brightness of the brandy-colored
world we cannot trust. It requires no scientific in-
struments of precision to record the failure of the
man who guides his life on a basis of impressions
Reality and Illusion 139
made by drugs or stimulants. The transit of Venus
is no product of fancy. To the astronomer the com-
ing of the planet between the earth and the sun is
as certain a thing as the coming of the earth into its
own shadow at night. The one incident is less com-
mon than the other, but not more mysterious. And
to go to that part of the earth which is turned toward
the sun at the moment of transit is the simple com-
mon-sense thing to do if one wishes to see the transit ;
to predict a transit is, for the scientist, to predict
that at some certain time and place it will be visible.
The island, the abandoned hut, and the cooking uten-
sils were only incidents to the astronomer. To the
natives these were the only realities, and the purposes
of science were to them unknown and absurd. To
the man of common sense the digging for treasure
under the direction of clairvoyants seems ridiculous.
The operation does not become more wise when we
see it through the eye of science, for the clairvoyant
cannot forecast his " probable error " from his
knowledge of the function he professes to exercise;
he promises " treasure," but he does not say how
much or at what precise spot, and, accordingly, even
if treasure is found, we are justified in our refusal
to admit that he had any actual knowledge of it.
The spectroscope, on the other hand, grows more
real and more potent as we study its methods and re-
sults. The process of weighing planets is open to
all who will continue their studies till they under-
stand it. The test of knowing is doing doing
140 Reality and Illusion
something definite and getting thereby results
sensibly satisfactorily identical with those which our
supposed knowledge clearly and unequivocally pre-
dicted at the outset. The oceanic cable is in the
service of all who have concerns in another con-
tinent. The phenomena of telepathy have fled be-
fore every attempt at experiment. The study of
X-rays is as far from occultism or spiritism as the
manufacture of brass is from the incarnation of
mahatmas. The mind healer, the faith healer, the
cure of disease by pious negation, the sale of the
patent medicine, the medical marvels of radium, the
wonders of the electric belt, the power of animal
magnetism (malicious or benign), are all witnesses
of the potency of suggestion in the untrained mind.
To the same class of phenomena the witch-hazel rod
belongs. Experiment seems to show that its move-
ments are due to involuntary muscular contractions,
and that these follow simply the preconceived no-
tions of the holder of the rod.*
* Bennet H. Brough . (London, 1892) gives the following
interesting quotations regarding the divining rod :
Theophilus Albinus (Dresden, 1794) says: "I ween that
no more confounded thing is to be found in the world than
this divining rod business. . . . For evil and lying dealing is
best hidden amid this confusion; and in the muddiest water,
rascality likes best to fish." William Hooson (London,
1747) says : " The dignified author of this invention was a
German, and at the last he was deservedly hanged for the
Cheat." Says Dr. Rossiter Raymond (1883): "In itself"
the divining rod "is nothing. Its claims to virtues derived
from the Deity, from Satan, from affinities and sympathies,
Reality and Illusion 141
Not long since a sciosophist proposed the theory
that the chemical elements were each of them forms
of " latent oxygen." That this theory is without
meaning did not disturb its author. His argument
was that the business of science was to propose all
sorts of theories. As some apples on a tree will be
sound so some theories will be true. To make
every conceivable conjecture is the way to hit on the
truth. His guess is that gold and hydrogen are
alike latent oxygen. Some such notion as to sci-
entific theories is common among cultured people of
all countries. To accept it is to ignore the whole
history of science. No advance in real knowledge
has come from guessing, or dreaming, or speculat-
ing, unless guesses or speculations have been based
on previous experience, and unless evidence in each
case is amenable to the test of action, and have
been submitted to it. If we want a picture
taken we find a man who has a camera, and who
knows how to use it. If we want the truth on any
subject we must find a man who understands our
questions, who has the instruments or methods of
precision, and who knows how to use them. There
is no other way. As well expect a man without a
from corpuscular effluvia, from electric currents, from pas-
sive perturbatory qualities of organo-electric force are hope-
lessly collapsed and discarded. A whole library of learned
rubbish which remains to us furnishes jargon for charla-
tans, marvelous tales for fools, and amusement for anti-
quarians." " The first divination," observes Voltaire, " took
place when the first knave met the first fool ! "
142 Reality and Illusion
camera and who knows not how to use it if he had
one, to take a photograph, as to trust to a logically
irresponsible speculator, guesser, or dreamer, to find
out any truth. To work without tools in the world
of objective reality, can yield only error and con-
fusion. There is no way to a just conception of any
part of the universe, except to gather the realities
relevant to our needs and interests, to compare and
consider these facts thus gathered, to set them in
order, and to verify in action whatever theory may
seem to arise from their relations.
REALITY AND EDUCATION
" Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity."
SHELLEY.
IF realities find their test and verification in ac-
tion, if knowledge finds its function in the con-
duct of life, these principles should find large ap-
plication in the field of Education. In youth, this
need of direct contact with truth should be the justi-
fication for nature-study. In manhood, this should
be the inspiration of scientific research.
In the present chapter I wish to discuss the natural
relation of nature-study to early education. By na-
ture-study in this sense I do not mean the reading of
clever tales of birds and beasts, still less sentimental
essays on their beauty, their perfection, or the divine
purpose they serve in the economy of nature. Nor
yet do I mean premature efforts at classification, the
learning of scientific names, or the names of their
varied organs under dissection. My plea is for the
large open-air contact of children with things as they
are, the heritage of every well-nurtured farm-boy, of
every child who has stood on his feet in the presence
143
144 Reality and Education
of natural objects. To be as a " part and parcel of
nature," to act as a natural person among natural
objects, is the aim of nature-study as thus conceived.
I shall try not to overstate the case, nor to claim for
such study any occult or exclusive power. It is not
for us to say so much nature-study in the schools, so
much wisdom and so much virtue in the scholars.
Moreover, the character of the teacher is the largest
factor in the matter. But the best teacher is the one
who comes nearest to nature the one most effective
in promoting individual wisdom.
To seek knowledge is better than to accept it
ready-made. To do something with it is better than
to hold it. Precepts of virtue are useless unless they
can be built into life. With the dawn of prenatal
life, " the gate of gifts is closed." We can get
nothing more. We can only adjust, arrange, em-
ploy what we have. It is the art of life, out of vari-
ant and contradictory materials passed down to us
from our ancestors, to build up coherent and effective
individual character.
The essence of character-building lies in action.
The chief value of nature-study in character-build-
ing is that, like life itself, it deals with realities. The
experience of living is itself a form of nature-study.
One must in life make his own observations, frame
his own inductions, and apply them in action as he
goes along. The habit of finding out the best thing to
do next, and then doing it, is the basis of character.
A strong character is built up by doing, not by imi-
Reality and Education 145
tation, nor by feeling, nor by suggestion. Nature-
study, if it be genuine, is essentially doing. This is
the basis of its effectiveness as a moral agent. To
deal with truth is necessary if we are to know truth
when we see it in action. To know truth precedes
all sound morality. There is a great impulse to vir-
tue in knowing something well. To know it well is
to come into direct contact with its facts or laws, to
feel that its qualities and forces' are inevitable. To
do this is the essence of nature-study in all its
forms.
The rocks and shells, the frogs and lilies, always
tell the actual truth so far as it goes. They give
clear and decisive answers to distinct and clear ques-
tions. Their relations to our lives are such that the
child can be led to ask concerning them simple and
definite questions which shall at the same time be of
vital interest to him. Thus, through commerce with
them, he can learn how rightly to know. Associa-
tions with these, under right direction, will build up
a habit of truthfulness, for nature is always truth-
ful. She teaches truth from original documents.
Every leaf on the tree is an original document in
botany. When a thousand are used, or used up, the
archives of nature are just as full as ever.
From their intimate affinity with the problems of
life, the problems of nature-study derive especial
value. Because life deals with realities, the visible
agents of the overmastering fates, it is well that our
children should study the real, rather than the con-
146 Reality and Education
ventional. Let them come in contact with the in-
evitable, instead of the " made-up," with laws and
forces which can be traced in objects and forms
actually before them, rather than with those which
seem arbitrary or which remain inscrutable. To use
concrete illustrations : there is a greater moral value
as well as a more easily available educative value in
the study of magnets than in the distinction be-
tween shall and will, in the study of birds or rocks
than in that of diacritical marks or postage stamps,
in the development of a frog than in the longer or
shorter catechism, in the study of things than in the
study of abstractions. There is doubtless a law un-
derlying abstractions and conventionalities, a law of
catechisms, but it does not so readily appear to the
student, nor so promptly lay hold upon his interest.
Its consideration, therefore, does not so effectively
strengthen his impression of inevitable truth. There
is the greatest moral value, as well as intellectual
value, in the independence that comes from knowing,
and knowing that one knows and why he knows.
Such knowledge gives backbone to character. Learn-
ing to know what is right and why it is right,
through doing it, and for the sake of doing it, is the
basis of character.
The nervous system of the animal or the man is
essentially a device to make action effective and to
keep it safe. The animal is a machine in action.
Toward the end of motion all other mental processes
tend. All functions of the brain, all forms of nerve
Reality and Education 147
impulse, are modifications of the simple reflex action,
the automatic transfer of sensations gathered from
external objects into movements of the body.
The sensory nerves furnish the animal or man at
his demand all knowledge of the external world.
The brain, sitting in darkness, as it were, judges
these sensations, and sends out corresponding im-
pulses to action. The sensory nerves are the brain's
sole teachers, but for them it would continue to sit
in darkness. The motor nerves, and, through them,
the muscles are the brain's only servants. The un-
trained brain, the brain that does not know how to
ask questions, nor when it has received answers,
learns its lessons poorly, and its commands are vacil-
lating and ineffective. The brain which has been
misused, shows its defects in ill-chosen actions. The
great argument for temperance rests on this; all
nerve-tampering causes the nerves to lie; a lying
brain means unbalanced action.
The senses are intensely practical in their rela-
tion to life. The processes of natural selection make
and keep them so. Only those phases of reality
which our ancestors could render into action are
shown to us by our senses. These senses tell us
superficial but essential truth about rocks and trees,
food and shelter, friends and enemies. They an-
swer no problem in chemistry. They say nothing
about atom or molecule. They give us no ultimate
facts. Whatever was so small that our ancestors
could not handle it is too small for us now to see.
148 Reality and Education
Whatever is too distant to be reached is not truth-
fully reported. The " X-rays "of light we cannot
see, because our ancestors could not deal with them.
The sun and stars, the clouds and the sky, are more
extended than they appear to be. Our sensitiveness
fails as the square of the distance increases. Were
our nervous systems to become suddenly receptive to
all forms of truth we should be smothered by the in-
rush of sensations. We should be overwhelmed by
the multiplicity and the intensity of our own emo-
tions. Truth-establishing response in action would
become impossible. Our questionings of nature
would be answered in a strange and sudden din of
Babel, and no longer in a fitting and familiar tongue.
Hyperesthesia, or abnormal susceptibility, in any or
all of the senses is a source of confusion, not of
strength. It is essentially a phase of nerve-disorder,
and it shows itself in ineffectiveness, not in increased
power.
Besides immediate sense-perceptions, the so-called
realities, the brain retains also traces of the percep-
tions which have been impressed upon it in the past,
and which are not wholly lost. Memory-pictures
crowd the mind, mingling with pictures which are
brought in afresh by the senses. The force of sug-
gestion causes the mental states or conditions of
one person to repeat themselves in another. Ab-
normal conditions of the brain itself furnish another
series of feelings with which the brain must deal.
Moreover, the brain is charged with impulses to
Reality and Education 149
action passed on from generation to generation, sur-
viving because they are useful. With all these arises
the vital necessity for wise choice as a function of
the mind. The mind must neglect or suppress all
sensations which it cannot weave into action. The
dog sees nothing that does not belong to its little
world. The man in search of mushrooms " tramples
down oak-trees in his walks." To select the sensa-
tions that concern us, to keep ourselves aloof from
those which do not, is the essence of the power of at-
tention. This power, manifesting itself in the sup-
pression of undesired actions, and in the enforce-
ment of those desired, is called the will. To find
data for choice among accessible objects of percep-
tion with the corresponding possible motor responses
is a function of the intellect. Intellectual per-
sistency based on persistency of interests is the
foundation of individual character.
As the conditions of life become more complex,
it becomes necessary for action to be more care-
fully controlled. Wisdom is the parent of virtue.
After the stage of verification, knowing what should
be done logically precedes doing it. Good impulses
and good intentions do not make acti m right or safe.
In the long run, action is tested not by its motives,
but by its results.
The child, when he comes into the world, has
everything to learn. His nervous system is charged
with tendencies to reaction and impulses to motion,
which have their origin in survivals from ancestral
150 Reality and Education
demands. Exact knowledge, by which his own
actions can be made exact, must come through his
own experience. The experience of others must be
expressed in terms of his own before it becomes wis-
dom. Wisdom, to repeat, is knowing what it is
best to do next. Virtue is doing it. Doing right
becomes a habit, if it is pursued long enough. It
becomes a " second nature," or, we may say, a
higher heredity. The formation of a higher hered-
ity of wisdom and virtue, of knowing right and do-
ing right, is the chief element of character-building.
The moral character is based on knowing the best,
choosing the best, and doing the best. It cannot be
built up on imitation alone. By imitation, sug-
gestion, and conventionality the masses are formed
and controlled. To build up a man is a nobler
process, demanding materials and methods of a
higher order. The growth of man is the assertion
of individuality. Only robust men can make his-
tory. Others may adorn it, disfigure it, or vulgar-
ize it.
The first relation of the child to external things is
expressed in this : What can I do with it ? What is
its relation to me? The perception goes over into
thought, the thought into action. Thus the im-
pression of the object is built into the little universe
of his mind. The object and the action it implies
are closely associated. As more objects are appre-
hended, more complex relations arise, but the primal
condition remains What can I do with it ? Percep-
Reality and Education 151
tion, thought, action this is the natural sequence of
each completed mental process. As volition passes
over into action, so does science into art, knowledge
into power, wisdom into virtue.
By the study of realities wisdom is built up. In
the relations of objects he can touch and move, the
child comes to find the limitations of his powers, the
laws that govern phenomena, and to which his ac-
tions must be in obedience. So long as he deals with
realities, these laws stand in their proper relation.
" So simple, so natural, so true," says Agassiz.
" This is the charm of dealing with Nature herself.
She brings us back to absolute truth so often as we
wander."
So long as a child is led from one reality to an-
other, never lost in words or in abstractions, so long
this natural relation remains. What can I do with
it? is the beginning of wisdom. What is It to me?
is the basis of personal virtue.
While a child remains about the home of his
boyhood, he knows which way is north and which is
east. He does not need to orientate himself, because
in his short trips he never loses his sense of space
direction. But let him take a rapid journey in the
cars or in the night, and he may find himself in
strange relations. The sun no longer rises in the
east, the sense of reality in directions is gone, and it
is a painful effort for him to join the new im-
pressions to the old. The process of orientation is
a difficult one, and if facing the sunrise in the morn-
152 Reality and Education
ing were a deed of necessity in his religion, this
deed would not be accurately performed.
This homely illustration applies to the child. He
is taken from his little world of realities, a world in
which the sun rises in the east, the dogs bark, the
grasshopper leaps, the water falls, and the relations
of cause and effect appear plain and natural. In
these simple relations moral laws become evident.
" The burnt child dreads the fire," and this dread
shows itself in action. The child learns what to do
next, and to some extent does it. By practice in
personal responsibility in little things, he can be led
to wisdom in large ones. For the power to do great
things in the moral world comes from doing the
right in small things. It is not often that a man
who really knows that there is a right does the
wrong. Men who do wrong are either ignorant
that there is a right, or else they have failed in their
orientation and look upon right as wrong. It is
the clinching of good purposes with good actions
that makes the man. This is the higher heredity
that is not the gift of father or mother, but is the
man's own work on himself.
The impression of realities is the basis of sound
morals as well as of sound judgment. By adding
near things to near, the child grows in knowledge.
" Knowledge set in order " is science. Nature-
study is the beginning of science. It is the science
of the child. To the child, training in methods of
acquiring knowledge is more valuable than knowl-
Reality and Education 153
edge itself. In general, throughout life sound
methods are more valuable than sound information.
Self-direction is more important than innocence.
The fool may be innocent. Only the sane and the
wise can be virtuous.
It is the function of science to make our knowl-
edge of the small, the distant, the invisible, the mys-
terious as accurate as our knowledge of the com-
mon things men have handled for ages. It seeks to
make our knowledge of common things exact and
precise, that exactness and precision may be trans-
lated into action. The ultimate end of science, as
well as its initial impulse, is the regulation of human
conduct. To make right action possible and
prevalent is the function of science. The " world
as it is " must be the ultimate inspiration of art,
poetry, and religion. The world, as men have
agreed to say it is, is quite another matter. The
less our children hear of this, the less they will have
to unlearn in their future development.
When a child is taken from nature to the schools,
he is usually brought into an atmosphere of con-
ventionality. Here he is not to do, but to imitate;
not to see, nor to handle, nor to create, but to re-
member. He is, moreover, to remember not his
own realities, but the written or spoken ideas of
others. He is dragged through a wilderness of
grammar, with thickets of diacritical marks, into
the desert of metaphysics. He is taught to do
right, not because right action is in the nature of
154 Reality and Education
things, the nature of himself, and the things about
him, but because he will be punished somehow if
he does not. He is given a medley of words with-
out ideas. He is taught declensions and conjuga-
tions without number in his own and other tongues.
He learns things easily by rote; so his teachers fill
him with rote-learning. Hence grammar and lan-
guage have become stereotyped as teaching with-
out a thought as to whether undigested words may
be intellectual poison. And as the good heart de-
pends on the good brain, undigested ideas may be-
come moral poison as well. No one can tell how
much of the intellectual and moral discomfort of
the schools has been due to intellectual dyspepsia
from undigested words.
In such manner the child is bound to lose his ori-
entation as to the forces which surround him. If
he does not recover it, he will spend his life in a
world of unused fancies and realities. Nonsense
will seem half truth, and his appreciation of truth
will be vitiated by lack of clearness of definition
by its close relation to nonsense. That this is no
slight defect can be shown in every community.
There is no intellectual craze so absurd as not to
have a following among educated men and women.
There is no scheme for the renovation of the so-
cial order so silly that educated men will not invest
their money in it. There is no medical fraud so
shameless that educated men will not give it their
certificate. There is no nonsense so unscientific
Reality and Education 155
that men called educated will not accept it as science.
It should be a function of the schools to build
up common sense. Folly should be crowded out
of the schools. We have furnished costly asylums
for its accommodation. That our schools are in a
degree responsible for current follies, there can be
no doubt. We have many teachers who have never
seen truth in their lives. There are many who
have never felt the impact of an idea. There are
many who have lost their own orientation in their
youth, and who have never since been able to point
out the sunrise to others. " Three roots bear up
Dominion Knowledge, Will, the third Obedience."
This statement, which Lowell applies to nations,
belongs to the individual man as well. It is writ-
ten in the structure of his brain knowledge, voli-
tion, action and all three elements must be sound,
if action is to be safe or effective.
But obedience must be active, not passive. The
obedience of the lower animals is automatic, and
therefore in its limits measurably perfect. Lack of
obedience means the extinction of the race. Only
the obedient survive, and hence comes about obedi-
ence to " sealed orders," obedience by reflex action,
in which the will takes little part. In the early
stages of human development, the instincts of
obedience were dominant. Great among these is
the instinct of conventionality, by which each man
follows the path others have found safe. The
Church and the State, organizations of the strong,
156 Reality and Education
have assumed the direction of the weak. It has
often resulted that the wiser this direction, the
greater the weakness it was called on to control.
The " sealed orders " of human institutions took
the place of the automatism of instinct. Against
" sealed orders " the individual man has been in con-
stant protest. The " warfare of science " was
part of this struggle. The Reformation, the re-
vival of learning, the growth of democracy, are all
phases of this great conflict.
The main function of democracy is not good gov-
ernment. If that were all, it w r ould not deserve the
efforts spent on it. Better government than any
king or congress or democracy has yet given could
be had in simpler and cheaper ways. The auto-
matic scheme of competitive examinations would
give us better rulers at half the present cost. Even
an ordinary intelligence office, or " statesman's em-
ployment bureau," would serve us better than con-
ventions and elections. But a people which could
be ruled in that way, content to be governed well
by forces outside itself, would not be worth the
saving. Government too good, as well as too bad,
may have a baneful influence on men. Its excel-
lence is a secondary matter. The purpose of self-
government is to intensify individual responsibility;
to promote attempts at wisdom, through which true
wisdom may come at last. Democracy is nature-
study on a grand scale. The republic is a huge
laboratory of civics, a laboratory in which strange
Reality and Education 157
experiments are performed; but by which, as in
other laboratories, wisdom may arise from experi-
ence, and, having arisen, may work itself out into
virtue.
" The oldest and best-endowed university in the
world," Dr. Parkhurst tells us, " is Life itself.
Problems tumble easily apart in the field that refuse
to give up their secret in the study or even in the
closet. Reality is what educates us, and reality
never comes so close to us, with all its powers of
discipline, as when we encounter it in action. In
books we find Truth in black and white; but in the
rush of events we see Truth at work. It is only
when Truth is busy and we are ourselves mixed up
in its activities that we learn to know of how much
we are capable, or even the power by which these
capabilities can be made over into effect."
Professor Wilbur F. Jackman has well said:
" Children always start with imitation, and very few
people ever get beyond it. The true moral act, how-
ever, is one performed in accordance with a known
law that is just as natural as the law which deter-
mines which way a stone shall fall. The individual
becomes a moral being in the highest sense when he
chooses to obey this law by acting in accordance
with it." Conventionality is not morality, and may
co-exist with vice as well as with virtue. Obedience
has little permanence unless it be intelligent obedi-
ence, an obedience that finds out, by working it out,
its own justification."
158 Reality and Education
It is, of course, true that wrong information may
lead sometimes to right action, as falsehood may
secure obedience to a natural law which would other-
wise have been violated. But in the long run men
and nations pay dearly for every illusion they cher-
ish. For every sick man healed at Denver or
Lourdes, ten well men may be made sick. The
faith cure and the patent medicine feed on the same
victim. For every Schlatter who is worshiped as
a saint, some equally harmless lunatic will be stoned
as a witch. This scientific age is beset by the non-
science which its altruism has made safe. The de-
velopment of the common sense of the people has
given security to a vast horde of follies, which
would be destroyed in the unchecked competition of
life. It is the soundness of our age which has made
what we call its decadence possible. It is the under-
current of science which has given security to human
life, a security which obtains for fools as well as for
sages.
For protection against all these follies which so
quickly fall into vices, or decay into insanity, we
must look to the schools. A sound recognition of
cause and effect in human affairs is our best safe-
guard. The old common sense of the " unhigh-
schooled man," aided by instruments of precision,
and directed by logic, must be carried over into the
schools. Clear thinking and clean acting, we be-
lieve, are results of the study of nature. When
men have made themselves wise, in the wisdom
Reality and Education 159
which may be completed in action, they have never
failed to make themselves good. When men have
become wise with the lore of others, the learning
which ends in self, a^id does not spend itself in ac-
tion, they have been neither virtuous nor happy.
" Much learning is a weariness of the flesh."
Thought without action ends in intense fatigue of
soul, the disgust with all the " sorry scheme of
things entire," which is the mark of the unwhole-
some philosophy of Pessimism. This philosophy
finds its condemnation in the fact that it has
never yet been translated into pure and helpful
life.
With our children, the study of words and ab-
stractions alone may, in its degree, produce the same
results. Nature-studies have long been valued as a
" means of grace," because they arouse the enthusi-
asm, the love of work, which belongs to open-eyed
youth. The child bored with moral precepts and
irregular conjugations turns with delight to the un-
rolling of ferns and the song of birds. There is a
moral training in clearness and tangibility. An oc-
cult impulse to vice is hidden in all vagueness and
in all teaching meant to be heard, but not to be un-
derstood. Carelessness in knowledge leads to care-
lessness in conduct. Nature is never obscure, never
occult, never esoteric. She must be questioned in
earnest, else she will not reply. But to every seri-
ous question she returns a serious answer. " Sim-
ple, natural, and true," should make the impression
160 Reality and Education
of simplicity and truth. Truth and virtue are but
opposite sides of the same shield. As leaves
pass over into flowers and flowers into fruit, so
are wisdom, virtue, and happiness inseparably
related.
VI
REALITY AND TRADITION
" In all modern history, interference with science in the
supposed interest of religion, no matter how conscientious
such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst
evils to religion and to science, and invariably. And on the
other hand, all untrammeled scientific investigation, no matter
how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed
for the time, has invariably resulted in the highest good both
of religion and of science." ANDREW DICKSON WHITE.
EACH man is the center of his own world. In
his secret heart he believes himself a child of
luck. If his affairs go persistently to the bad, he
is, in his own estimation at least, persecuted by
fortune. He is always in his own foreground, the
object of special favor or of special malice. As
each individual thus feels himself the object of at-
tention from mysterious unseen powers, so with hu-
man society. In all the ages, men have found a
mystic or divine warrant for their collective ac-
tions, whatever these may be. On this warrant, in-
stitutions have been built up. Those institutions
that survive gather to themselves an ever-increas-
ing authority. This is a divine warrant so far as
it goes. For all such authority must, in the main,
161
1 62 Reality and Tradition
rest on man's needs. There must be reality in these
needs, else the institutions would not have so long
persisted. Thus, should every fragment of the his-
toric churches of Christendom disappear, every
memory, every ceremony, every trace of creed or
form, the church would rise again, renewed as to
all of its essentials. Around these essentials non-
essentials would accumulate, like driftwood on a lee
shore. With each variant race of man, there would
be a corresponding variation in the external features
of the church.
Monarchy, in turn, exists by the same divine
right. It is workable in a degree, and thus it per-
sists. By the same divine right it is claimed that
the wheelbarrow also persists. This is also work-
able in its degree and for its own purpose. When
monarchy fails, the same divinity that hedged the
king sustains the rights of the people. The king
was God's anointed, so long as the people were con-
tent. But when " God said, * I am tired of kings, I
suffer them no more,' " the self-rule of the people
acquired the same divine right. The power belongs
to whoever can use it. We know God's purposes
only by what he permits. That which exists as if
in the nature of things, that which proclaims itself
as powerful, men have worshiped as divine. This
is especially true if origin and relations have been
dimly understood. The force felt in the darkness
has been the fittest object of worship. To worship
a god built visibly of a block of wood has never ap-
Reality and Tradition 163
pealed to strong men. It is the hidden force in-
visible, even in stone, before which men bow.
It has been plain to man in all ages that he is sur-
rounded by forces stronger than himself, invisible
and intangible, inscrutable in their real nature, but
terribly potent to produce results. As the human
will seems capricious because the springs of voli-
tion are hidden from observation, so to the unknown
will that limits our own we ascribe an infinite
caprice. All races of men capable of abstract
thought have believed in the existence of something
outside themselves whose power is without human
limitations. Through the imagination of poets the
forces of nature become personified. In primitive
logic the existence of power demands corresponding
will. The power is infinitely greater than ours; the
sources of its action inscrutable; hence man has
conceived the unknown first cause as an infinite and
unconditioned man. Anthropomorphism in some
degree is inevitable, because each man must think
in terms of his own experience. Into his own per-
sonal universe, all that he knows must come. Recog-
nition of the hidden but gigantic forces in nature
leads men to fear and to worship them. To think
of them either in fear or in worship is to give them
human forms. About the perceptions of things
formed in his own brain, each man builds up his
own subjective or self-centered universe. Each ac-
cretion of knowledge must be cast more or less di-
rectly in terms of previous experience. By proc-
164 Reality and Tradition
esses of suggestion and conventionality the ideas
of the individual become assimilated to those of the
multitude. Men are gregarious creatures, and their
speech gives them the power to add to their own in-
dividual experiences the concepts and experiences of
others. Suggestion and conventionality play a
large part in the mental equipment of the individual
man. Thus myths arise to account for phenom-
ena not clearly within the ordinary experiences of
life. And in all mythology the unknown is ascribed
not to natural forces, but to the quasi-personal ac-
tion of powers that transcend nature, powers that
lie outside the domain of the familiar and the real.
Primitive man finds this interpretation satisfac-
tory, and he holds it as true. Cause and effect for
him are conceptions of vaguely personal influence
and personal response. His interests, his under-
takings, his imaginings, and hopes, slowly and un-
certainly develop to a form and magnitude which
these conceptions cannot manage. When man can
no longer accept the answers which the use of these
conceptions brings the age of science has set in. It
is the mission of science so far as it goes to
place man in more and more satisfactory working
relations with the real nature of the universe. By
methods of precision of thought and by instruments
of precision of observation and experiment, science
seeks to make our knowledge of the small, the
distant, the invisible, the mysterious, the mighty, as
accurate, as practical, as our knowledge of common
Reality and Tradition 165
things. Moreover, it seeks to make our knowledge
of common things also accurate and precise, that
this accuracy and precision may be translated into
more effective action. For the ultimate end of sci-
ence as well as its initial impulse is the regulation
of human conduct. Seeing true means thinking
right. Right thinking means right action. Greater
precision in action makes higher civilization pos-
sible.
But the progress of science is slow. It must over-
come powerful resistance. The social instincts of
primitive man tend to crystallize in institutions even
his common hopes and fears. An institution im-
plies a division of labor. Hence, in each age and in
each race men have set apart certain of their fel-
lows as representatives of these hidden forces, de-
voted them to the propitiation of these forces.
These men are thus commissioned to speak in the
name of each god that the people worship, or of
each demon the people dread. The existence of
each cult of priests is bound up in the perpetuation
of the mysteries and traditions assigned to its care.
These traditions are linked with other traditions
and with other mystic explanations of uncompre-
hended phenomena. While human theories of the
sun, the stars, the clouds, of earthquakes, storms,
comets, and disease, have no direct relation to the
feeling of worship, they cannot be disentangled from
it. The uncomprehended, the unfamiliar, and the
supernatural are one and the same in the untrained
1 66 Reality and Tradition
human mind; and one set of prejudices cannot be
dissociated from the others.
To the ideas acquired in youth we attach a sort
of sacredness. For the course of action we follow
we are prone to claim some kind of mystic sanction ;
and this mystic sanction applies not only to acts
of virtue and devotion, but to the most unimportant
rites and ceremonies. In theje we resent changes
with the full force of such conservatism as we pos-
sess. New ideas, without the sanction of tradition,
whatever the nature of their source, must struggle
for acceptance. To the scientific notions of our
childhood we cling with special persistence, because
they are associated with our conception of right
doing and of the motives which control it. Both
are part of the mental universe we built around us
in our youth, and one in which we would not will-
ingly make changes or extensions. Much that we
have called religion is merely the debris of our
grandfather's science.
In history the struggle of knowledge drawn from
present and significant realities, against tradition
and prejudice drawn from past realities, has as-
sumed the form of a war of science with religion.
Not that religion is bound up in the preservation of
error, but that men have bolstered up their tradi-
tional opinions with the consensus of society, and
this fact has appeared as a religious sanction. Thus
the history of the progress of knowledge has been
a record of physical resistance of organized society
Reality and Tradition 167
to new ideas drawn from the deeper experience and
the bolder aspiration of men. " By the light of
burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track." He
who sees that the world does move is burned at
the stake, that other men may be convinced of the
earth's stability. He who is sure that granite rock
was once melted finds social pressure against him
when he would make known the results of his ob-
servations. He who would give the sacred books
of our civilization the faithful scrutiny their vast
importance deserves, finds the doors of libraries and
universities closed to his research. He who has
seen the relation of man to his brother animals, finds
the air filled with the vain chatter of those to whom
whatever is natural seems only profane. " Extin-
guished theologians," Huxley tells us, " lie about
the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes
beside that of the infant Hercules."
But this, again, is not the whole story. All these
are only incidents natural to human development.
Not only theologians lie strangled about the cradle
of the infant giant, but learned men of all classes
and conditions. Learning and wisdom are not
identical; they are not always on speaking terms.
Learning looks backward to the past. The word
" learn " involves the existence of some man as
teacher. Wisdom looks forward to the future. In
so far as science is genuine, it is of the nature of
wisdom. " To come in when it rains " is the be-
ginning of the science of meteorology. " The soul
1 68 Reality and Tradition
that sinneth, it shall die," is the practical basis of the
science of personal ethics. To be wise is to be ready
to act ; but learning as such in all the ages has con-
demned wisdom and despised action.
The development of all science has been a con-
stant struggle, a struggle of reality against super-
stition, of instant impressions against traditional in-
terpretations, of truth against " make-believe," of
investigation against opinion. Investigation once
enthroned as science must meet again insurgent
opinion, and the recrudescence of ancient folly.
For men are prone to trust a theory rather than a
fact; a fact is a single point of contact; a theory
or a tradition is a circle made of an infinite number
of points, none of them, however, it may be, real or
permanently significant.
The warfare of science is, however, not primarily,
as Draper has called it, a conflict with religion, nor
even, as President White would have it, a struggle
with " dogmatic theology." It is all of these, but
it is more than these a conflict of tendencies in the
human mind which has worked itself out into his-
tory. The great crises of history in general are
rehearsed in the minds of men before they appear on
the stage of the world. This issue is settled in psy-
chology before it appears in history. In the affairs
of life most of us, of necessity, perform deeds and
recite sentences " written for us generations before
we were born." " He hath his exits and his en-
trances." He is a rare man who can add a new
Reality and Tradition 169
meaning to his lines or give a better one to him that
follows. For it may take a lifetime of the severest
labor to find out a new fact. No truth comes to
man unless he asks for it. It needs years of pa-
tience and devotion to ask a genuinely and radically
new question. He is already a master in science
who can suggest a new experiment. The history
of the progress of science is written in human psy-
chology before it appears in human records. In the
mind of the discoverer and in the minds of those
who antagonize his discovery, the strife is on. It is
the struggle of the few realities or present sense-
impressions against the multitude of past im-
pressions, with their suggestions and explanations.
The struggle between science and theology has re-
sulted only because theological misconceptions were
entangled with crude notions of other sorts. In
the experience of a single human life there is little to
correct even the crudest of theological conceptions.
From the supposed greater importance of religious
opinions in determining the fate of men and nations,
theological ideas have dominated all others through-
out the ages. Therefore, in the nature of things,
the great religious bodies have formed the strong-
hold of conservatism against which the separated
bands of science have hurled themselves, long seem-
ingly in vain.
From some phase of the " warfare of science "
no individual is exempt. In some one line, at least,
every lofty mind throughout the ages has demanded
170 Reality and Tradition
access to the freedom of objective reality, the right
to question in his own way the empirical world of
individual real things. More and more through
the ages, men in our day have learned to trust a
present fact, or group of facts, however contradic-
tory its teachings, as opposed to tradition and
opinion. From this increasing trust, keeping pace
with the development of men's practical needs and
theoretical interests, the great fabric of modern sci-
ence has been built up. There is no better antidote
to bigotry than the study of the growth of knowl-
edge. There is no chapter in history more encour-
aging than that which treats of the growth of open-
mindedness. The study of this history leads re-
ligious men to shun intolerance in the present,
through a knowledge of the evils intolerance has
wrought in the past. Men of science are spurred
to more earnest work by the record that through the
ages objective truth has been the final test of all
theories and conceptions. All men will work more
sanely and more effectively as they realize that no
good to religion or science comes from trying " to
please God with a lie."
The progress of science has been a struggle of
thinkers, observers, and experimenters against the
dominant forces of society. It has been a con-
tinuous battle, in which the side that seems weakest
is, in the long run, winner, having the strength of
the universe behind. It has been incidentally a con-
flict of earth-born knowledge with opinions of men
Reality and Tradition 171
sanctioned by religion; of present fact with pre-
established system; visibly a warfare between in-
ductive thought and dogmatic theology. But the
real struggle lies deeper than this. It is the ef-
fort of the human mind to relate itself to realities
in the midst of traditions and superstitions, to
realize that Nature never contradict? herself, is al-
ways complex, but never mysterious. As a final
result all past systems of philosophy, if not all pos-
sible systems, have been thrown back into the realm
of literature, of poetry. They can no longer dog-
matically control the life of action, each forward
step of which must take its departure from present
aim and present fact. In the warfare of tradition
against science the real and timely in act and mo-
tive has striven to replace the unreal and the ob-
solete. Men have very slowly learned that the true
glory of life lies in its wise conduct, in the daily
act of love and helpfulness, not in the vagaries
fostered by the priest nor in the spasms of madness
which are the pride of the spirit of war. To live
here and now as a man should live constitutes the
ethics of science. This ideal has been in constant
antithesis to the ethics of ecclesiasticism, of ascet-
icism, and of militarism, as well as to the fancies of
the various groups of " intellectual malcontents to
whom the progress of science seems slow and
laborious."
Science is human experience of contact with real
things tested, set in order, and expressed in terms
172 Reality and Tradition
of other human experience. Utilitarian science is
that part of knowledge a man can use in the affairs
of life. What is pure science to one may be ap-
plied science to another. The investigation of the
laws of heredity may be strictly academic to us of
the university, but they are rigidly utilitarian as re-
lated to the preservation of the nation or to the
breeding of pigs.
Pure science and utilitarian science merge into
each other at every point. They are one and the
same thing in logical framework and in basal con-
ceptions. Every new truth can be used to enlarge
human power or to alleviate human suffering. There
is no fact so remote as to have no possible bearing
on human utility. Applied science is pure science
before it is applied. Pure science is pure not in an
impossible transcendence of all application, but in
its impartial availability for any desired application.
To apply science to human needs is to utilize it as
well as to lend it verification. Every new truth of
science may fall into the grasp of that higher philan-
thropy which considers the highest as well as the
lowest in the well-being of man. Science is the
flower of human altruism. No worker in science
can stand alone. None counts for much who tries
to do so. He must enter into the work of others.
He must fit his thought to theirs. He must stand
on the shoulders of the past, if he is to look far into
the future. The past has granted its assistance to
the fullest degree of the most perfect altruism. The
Reality and Tradition 173
future will not refuse its own co-operation, and, in
return, whatever knowledge it can take for human
uses, it will choose in untrammeled freedom. The
sole line which sets off utilitarian science lies in the
limitation of human strength and of human life.
The single life must be given to a narrow field, to a
single strand of truth, following it wherever it may
lead. Some must teach, some must investigate,
some must adapt to human uses. It is not often
that these functions can be united in the same in-
dividual. It is not necessary that they should be
united; for art is long, though life is short, and
time is fleeting.
I have said before that in matters not presently
vital to action, the exactness and pertinence of
knowledge loses its importance. Any tradition, as
any other kind of belief, may be safe, if we do not
place upon it the weight of action. It is perfectly
safe, in the ordinary affairs of life, for one who
does not propose to trust himself to his convictions
to believe in witches and lucky stones, imps and
elves, astral bodies and odic forces. Thus, also, one
may believe in the right of the present heir of the
Stuarts to the throne of England. He may believe
in Feudalism, in the patristic miracles or in the
apotheosis of Roman Emperors. It is quite as
consistent with ordinary living to accept these as
objective realities as it is to have the vague faith
in microbes and molecules, mahatmas and proto-
plasm, protective tariffs and manifest destiny, which
174 Reality and Tradition
forms part of the mental outfit of the average Amer-
ican citizen of to-day. Unless these conceptions
are to be brought into terms of personal experience,
unless in some degree we are to trust our lives to
them, unless they are to be wrought into action, they
are irrelevant to the conduct of life. Unless in
some way we propose to act upon them, we are not
really holding them as articles of faith. When they
are tested by action, the truth in tradition, as in
other conception, is separated from the falsehood,
and the error involved in antiquated or vague
or silly ideas becomes manifest. As one comes to
handle microbes, they become as real as bullets or
oranges, and as susceptible of being known or
measured or photographed. Thus one may test and
prove the truth of the lesson of the Book of Job,
that of the Ten Commandments, that of the law of
eminent domain. But the astral body touches no
reality, and ghosts vanish before the electric light.
" The world as it is," or, rather, the world as it is
to us, is the province of science. " The God of the
things as they are " is the God of the highest heaven.
"Of the things as they are " to us, we mean,
for we can know no other things, nor any things in
any other way. And as, to the sane man, the world,
as it is, is glorious, beautiful, harmonious, and di-
vine, so will science more and more rise to be the
inspiration of art, of poetry, and of religion. We
stand on the threshold of a new century; a century
of science; a century whose discoveries of reality
Reality and Tradition 175
shall far outweigh those of all centuries which have
preceded it; a century whose glories even the most
conservative of scientific men dare not try to fore-
cast. And this twentieth century is but one the
least, most likely of the many centuries crowding
to take their place in the development of human
knowledge. Each century will behold a great
increase of precision in each branch of human
knowledge, a great widening of the horizon of
human thought, a great improvement in the condi-
tions of human life, as enlightened purpose, intelli-
gence, and precision rise to be more and more con-
trolling factors in human action.
The truth we need is the truth we can use in our
affairs. The life of action verifies and validates
the world of realities. For " we are men " after
all, says Fonsegrive, " and not gods. We know the
whole of nothing, but we know something. 'Tis
but little no doubt, but this little suffices for our
purposes."
INDEX
Absolute truth, 8
Acceptability not an index of
truth, u
Acquired characters, 87; in-
heritance of, 81
Adaptation, 47
Agassiz, 114, 136
Albinus, on the divining rod,
140
Alchemy, 129
Anthropomorphism, 163
Applied science, 172
Articles of Monistic Faith, 73
Atmospheria, lords of, 113
Attention, 149
Authority, 161
Bacon, on votive offerings,
120
Balfour, on belief, 36; on
claims of senses, 26; on
doubt, 35 ; on life in a
dimly lighted room, 28; on
" the sun gives light," 30
Belief, 42, 43 ; and make-
believe, 86; in unverifiable
hypotheses, 85
Bergson, on Creative Evolu-
tion, 47 ; on the Intellect, 44
Bierce, on snake charming,
99
Blood, on wildness of the
universe, 70
Borderland of spirit, 37
Boundary Fisheries, 17
Bradley, on the universe, 69
Brooks, on Vitalism, 73
B rough, on the divining rod,
140
Bryan, on truth in cerebral
psychology, 92
Burbank, and plant creation,
107
Carbon, maker of Life, 74
Cause and effect, 60
Cheerfulness, makes for
health, 120
Chemism, 75
Chesterton, on Creeds, 43
Circumstance as a Strong
God, 39
Colburn, on rival philoso-
phies, 89
Comet shriek, 104
Common Sense, 60
Conduct of Life, 61
Cordilleras, section of, 41
Creeds, 42
Cures at Lourdes, 124
Cuvier, 114
Darwin, on circumnutation,
49
Death, result of disobedience,
52
Decadence made safe by sci-
ence, 158
Delusion, 5, 98
Democracy, a laboratory of
citizenship, 156
Denver, saint of, 118
Desmarest on volcanic action,
88
Ding an sich, 5, 29
Disease, meaning of, 118
Divine right, 162
Divining rods, 101, 141, 142
177
178
Index
Dominion, roots of, 155
Dramatic tone in science, 42
Draper, on warfare of sci-
ence, 168
Dream pictures, 20
Dresslar, on rabbit's foot,
133; on superstition, 134,
135
Driesch, on vital force, 74
Emerson, on law, 134; on pre-
tense of belief, 80; on short
cuts to truth, 88
Equal Access, law of, 114
Etolin and the red salmon,
109
Evolution, orderly change, 47
Evolutionary unity of chem-
ical elements, 76
Evolutionary unity of Life,
76,78
Fall of Leaf, 72
Falsehood kills, 21
Ferguson, on justice of uni-
verse, 69
Flagellantes, 121
Flower in the crannied wall,
4i
Fonsegrive, on limits of
knowledge, 3 ; on men who
are not gods, 175
Force unconditioned, in
Foreordination, 71
Fouillee, on universe as a
broken mirror, 71
Foundations of belief, 36
Franklin, on Methusalem, 129
Franklin, W. S., on meaning
of Physics, 34
Galton, 87
Gaseous Vertebrate, belief in,
36
Germs of truth, 22
Giard, on indirect approaches
to knowledge, 65
Gladstone, on belief, 86
Goblins, non-existence of, 3
God, goodness and severity
of, 41
God of things as they are, 175
Haeckel, on articles of faith,
86; on carbon, 74; as dog-
matist, 90; on the gaseous
vertebrate, 36; on Monism,
72
Havens, on unconditioned
force, no
Hegel, on Monism, 66
Hermanos Penitentes, 121
History repeating itself, al-
most, never quite, 71
Homoousion or Homoiou-
sion, 84
Hooson, on divining rod, 140
Huxley, 86; on the Infant
Hercules, 167; on truth, 96
Hyperaesthesia, 57
Ibsen, on longevity of truth,
96
Idol, magic power of, 113
Illusion, 5, 98
Illusions of brandy, 99
Impulses point backward, 53
Innate Ideas, 27
Intelligence unlimited, 40
Irritability, 49
Jackman, on moral training,
157
James, on Greek Ideal in
Philosophy, 65 ; on truth,
97; on the Purpose of the
Absolute, 69; on Rational
Unity, 67 ; on sharpness of
ideas, 95 ; on True ideas,
25 ; on the unfinished Uni-
verse, 67; on unreal belief,
82, 83
Jesus, religion of, 50
John's John, 31
Josh Billings, on untrue
knowledge, 95
Judge, on illusions of mat-
ter, 122
Index
179
Kant, on Monism, 66
Kelvin, on size of molecules,
80
Knowledge, as power, 19; as
weariness, 55
Latent Oxygen, 141
Learning looks backward,
167
Life in inert matter, 132
Lineage relatively good, 55
Livableness, test of truth, 4,
II, 12
Logical necessity, 88
Lombroso, on Paladino, 125
Lourdes, 123
Luther, on innate ideas, 27
Make-believe and belief, 86
Man, an alliance of zooids,
32; a shifting alliance of
cells, 32
Mares, on Lourdes, 123
Matter and force identical,
75
Matter and mind, 122
Mechanism, 73
Medicine men, 128
Memory, 148
Mesmer, on magnetism, 128
Methusalem, his fondness for
pure air, 129
Mind and matter, 122
Mind controlling matter, 107
Minot, on scientific medicine,
135
Monarchy, 162
Monism, 65, 66
Moral training, 150
Mormonism, 50
Motion of trains, 09
Mystic sanctions, 161, 166
Mythology, 163
Natural selection, 47
Nature study, 143, 159
Nervous system, 146; and
locomotion, 7
Nihil nemini nocet, 84
Oahspe, 113
Obedience, as adaptation, 52
Objective impressions, 5
Objective truth, 97
Odin and the golden mead,
107
Organisms as links in chain
of life, 52
Orientation, 151
Ostwald, on results of belief,
82, 83
Pain a signal, 61
Paladino, Eusapia, 125
Pantheism, 85
Parasilenic Telegraph, 105
Parkhurst, on the world as
an university, 157
Partial knowledge true so far
as it goes, 10
Peirce, on belief, 95 ; on elu-
sive ideas, 95
Pessimism, 51
Philosophic doubt, 35, 60
Philosophy, purpose of, 42,
45
Planets, course of, 10, 103
Plants as sessile animals, 49
Pluralism, 82
Poverty, abolition of, 117
Practicality of senses, 57
Pretending to know, 62
Progressive evolution, 8l
Pure science, 172
Rabbit's foot as a charm, 132
Rainmaking, in
Rational unity of all things,
67
Raymond, on divining rod,
140
Realities adequate to needs, 7
Reality, and the Conduct of
Life, 47; and education,
143 ; and illusion, 95 ; its
meaning, 5 ; and Monism,
65; objective origin, 38;
and science, 3; subjective
element in, 38; to be over-
i8o
Index
come, not dodged, 120; and
tradition, 161
Reason, a choice among re-
sponses, 30; its limits, 29
Recrudescence of supersti-
tion, 56
Red Salmon, run of, 109
Reincarnation, 12, 130
Religion holding to debris of
science, 166
Riley, on goblins, 3
Ritter, on non-science, 92
Rontgen rays, 125
Roses and poppies; their
color, 29
Royce, on the Universe, 69
Science, her cast-off impedi-
menta, 93 ; and non-science,
135 ; stops where facts
stop, 91 ; tests of, 137
Scientific induction, 137
Scientific methods, 138
Sensation and action, 48
Senses, practicality of, 147
Shelley, on Life, 143
Silva, Madame de, magic
powers of, 114
Sizing up situation, 16
Snake charming, 99
Spectroscope, 83
Spencer, on Monism, 66
Spontaneous Generation, 74,
78
Stuart, on hidden conditions,
28; on Monism, 66
Subjective dangers harmless,
61
Subjective impressions, 5
Suburban booms, 112
Sun, eclipse of, 100
Supreme Being feeling his
way, 71
Swinburne, lack of belief, 43
Symbolism of Eucharist, 84
Taine, on Activity of Parisi-
ans, 98
Teacups, Sciosophy of, 36
Telepathy, 105
Tradition, 165
Transmutation of metals, 77
Treasures buried, 101
Tropism, 48
Truth, its final test, 4; its
meaning, 96; shown by ef-
fective action, 17; state-
ment of, 6; tested by
safety, 59; and virtue re-
lated, 160
Undigested words, 154
Universe as a "going con-
cern," 70; as unreturning,
71
Universe, its vastness, 13
Venus, transit of, 100
Veracity of thought and ac-
tion, 54
Virtue, 24
Vital force, 33
Vitalism, 73
Voltaire, on Divination, 141 ;
on divining the future, 71
Votive offerings, 120
Wallace, on evolution of
mind, 89
Warfare of reality against
tradition, 166
Warfare of science, 169
Weismann, 87
White, A. D., on interfer-
ence with science, 161 ; on
warfare of science, 168
White, W. A., 70
Wisdom, 24; looks forward,
167
Wong Chang, magic power
of, 114
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