Page:Educational Review Volume 23.djvu/63

 factors—and especially the aspects just presented of the relations of theory to practice—culminate is that of the formation of belief-standards. It is in the common possession of these that the logical man of theory and the logical man of practice should find their sympathetic companionship; and to the appreciation of this underlying requisite for harmonious and profitable intercourse, nothing will contribute more directly and effectively than a comprehension of the relations that do and should exist between the guiding principles of belief and their wise embodiment in conduct. If the leaders of men, leaders of small companies and of large ones, those who are listened to and likewise listen to others, can be induced to absorb somewhat of the spirit and the sensitiveness to real distinctions that result from the successful devotion to the aims of science, the danger of the ready acceptance of false beliefs, the fostering of credulity, would be materially lessened.

In an age when many marvelous things have been accomplished, some of them on the surface as unexpected and as unconnected with other knowledge, indeed as seemingly contradictory of such knowledge, as the ostensible miracles and startling paradoxes that are paraded as demonstrable truth, it is natural enough that the man in the street should be bewildered and not know what to believe nor whom to believe. Between the Scylla of ignorant and obstinate skepticism and the Charybdis of ignorant and rash credulity, the channel seems perplexingly narrow; nor is it always possible to assume the expertness and disinterestedness of those who offer themselves as pilots. The possibility of seeing one’s bones thru the skin seems as remote as the possibility of perpetual motion; telepathy no more wonderful than wireless telegraphy; the predictions of the astrological almanac as credible as the determination by the spectroscope of the physical conditions of other planets; the phrenological faculties as satisfying as the results of the physiological study of brain-localizations; the mental vibrations of the “absent treatment” healer as fairly supported by the results as the therapeutic action of drugs; the presentation of the mathematical triturations and the homeopathic potencies as learned and convincing as the enigmatic formulae and