Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/277

Rh ; or, as I prefer, natural historian. This means a descent from the dizzy perch of "the world" to the humble, particular things of which the world is composed. Or, expressed in the vernacular, it means "coming down to brass tacks." Exactly! Imagine, if you will, a representative emotional naturalist, a representative realist in art, a representative humanitarian religionist, a representative ascetic religionist, a representative "man of the world," a representative subjective idealist, and representatives of as many other types of world-viewing as you like, each one taking his turn in stepping, barefoot, on the upturned point of a brass tack. Is there anything in the result upon which they all agree? Note particularly that I do not ask, "Is there anything in the result about which they, or some of them, disagree?" Almost certainly there will be disagreement as to some of the details of the result; but these disagreements will not invalidate nor make meaningless the points on which they do agree. Very well, then, as to this experiment the general conclusion is that brass tacks are neither totally different nor absolutely alike, as interpreted by these several observers.

You will not miss my point: This rosebush in the front yard, that house across the street—is there the slightest disagreement among us, no matter how divergent our points of view, my ten-year-old boy friend, my man-of-the-world friend, my subjective-idealist friend, my artist friend, my Christian science friend, and all the rest, that this is a rosebush, and that that is a house? Does any one hedge or qualify in answering? Is or is not this a big rock on which we sit, an automobile in which we ride? Imagine yourselves, each one of you, under demand to choose in just three seconds between an unqualified "yes" and an unqualified "no" as an answer, the demand being backed up by a Winchester rifle leveled at your head. The first point to be gained in this is to see whether you will or will not make the choice, not to find what the choice will be. Either the "yes" or the "no" will save your life. What the demander is after is to find, first of all, whether or not you can choose instantly, when the issue is one of life or death. Having decided that, the question of what the choice is, is greatly interesting. Do you doubt that you would choose? And do you doubt that the "ayes would have it" unanimously? There is then, is there not, something about the world on which we can all agree? Is there not, in fact, a great deal about it on which we can agree when we come down to "brass tacks"; that is when common sense is appealed to, and life or death the issue?

I am speaking under the auspices of a scientific society to a more or less general audience. The occasion seems fitting, therefore, to raise the question as to what science is doing and may do toward finding what is solid in the world for all mankind—ground on which all may stand with equal unobstructedness of view for looking at the vast complex of things