The seer may be right or he may be wrong,
but we have no proof--and only according to our temperament, our fancy,
our experience, our mood, do we decide with one or the other of the two
great schools.
Well, the gentleman of whom I am speaking wrote and had printed in plain
English this phrase (read it carefully):--"Science teaches us that these
phenomena are purely subjective."
Now I am quite sure that of the thousands who read that phrase all but a
handful read it in the spirit in which one hears the oracle of a god.
Some read it with regret, some with pleasure, but all with acquiescence.
That physical science was not competent in the matter one way or the
other each of those readers would probably have discovered, if even so
simple a corrective as the use of the term "physical research" instead
of the sacred term "science" had been applied; the hierarchic title
"Science" did the trick.
I might take another example out of many hundreds to show what I mean.
You have an authority which is called, where documents are concerned,
"The Best Modern Criticism." "The Best Modern Criticism" decides that
"Tam o' Shanter" was written by a committee of permanent officials of
the Board of Trade, or that Napoleon Bonaparte never existed. As a
matter of fact, the tomfoolery does not usually venture upon ground so
near home, but it talks rubbish just as monstrous about a poem a few
hundred or a few thousand years old, or a great personality a few
hundred or a few thousand years old.
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