Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/69

Rh matter that they are more recently known since neither can perish before the other.

It may be said, for instance, that the ether is no less real than any external body; to say this body exists is to say there is between the color of this body, its taste, its smell, an intimate bond, solid and persistent; to say the ether exists is to say there is a natural kinship between all the optical phenomena, and neither of the two propositions has less value than the other.

And the scientific syntheses have in a sense even more reality than those of the ordinary senses, since they embrace more terms and tend to absorb in them the partial syntheses.

It will be said that science is only a classification and that a classification can not be true, but convenient. But it is true that it is convenient, it is true that it is so not only for me, but for all men; it is true that it will remain convenient for our descendants; it is true finally that this can not be by chance.

In sum, the sole objective reality consists in the relations of things whence results the universal harmony. Doubtless these relations, this harmony, could not be conceived outside of a mind which conceives them. But they are nevertheless objective because they are, will become, or will remain, common to all thinking beings.

This will permit us to revert to the question of the rotation of the earth which will give us at the same time a chance to make clear what precedes by an example.

". . . Therefore,'"' have I said in Science and Hypothesis, "this affirmation, the earth turns round, has no meaning. . . or rather these two propositions, the earth turns round, and, it is more convenient to suppose that the earth turns round, have one and the same meaning."

These words have given rise to the strangest interpretations. Some have thought they saw in them the rehabilitation of Ptolemy's system, and perhaps the justification of Galileo's condemnation.

Those who had read attentively the whole volume could not, however, delude themselves. This truth, the earth turns round, was put on the same footing as Euclid's postulate, for example. Was that to reject it? But better; in the same language it may very well be said: These two propositions, the external world exists, or, it is more convenient to suppose that it exists, have one and the same meaning. So the hypothesis of the rotation of the earth would have the same degree of certitude as the very existence of external objects.

But after what we have just explained in the fourth part, we may go farther. A physical theory, we have said, is by so much the more