92 C. L. MORGAN : THE GENERALISATIONS OF SCIENCE.

It may however be said by one who holds to this distinction between known and existent that such a geometrical law as that the three angles of a plane triangle are equal to two right angles, is a truth that exists whether we know it or not. It is, we are told, a fact for all time eternal and immutable, and would be just as true had no mathematician ever discovered it. I venture to doubt the truth of this venerable assertion. Of all branches of science none better than geometry illustrates what Lewes meant when he spoke of the ideal construction of science. The whole fabric is a human product. Its generalisations are absolutely true. Yes ! So long as you grant the absolute truth of its axioms and postulates. The science from beginning to end is redolent of human genius; and without that genius had never existed. Given three stars and a human mind and the laws of the triangle emerge. But take away the percipient mind ; and what remains but your three stars ? Certain relations are implicit in the triangle which may be formed, if, between each pair of the stars, there be drawn the shortest possible line. True ; but you need the geometer to perceive them. The half sovereign is implicit in the quartz-reef. True ; but it has no existence as such till it be minted. My position, which I believe to be the positive position, is now, I trust, sufficiently clear. I have no right to occupy space in its further elaboration. But I believe it to be essential that scientific laws should be purged of the metaphysical glamour of necessity, absoluteness, eternity, immutability and the like, which is too apt to surround them. And with this end in view I am not prepared to counsel the abandonment of the " ascertainment-clause " so long as this helps us to grasp the fact, that the laws of science which we call Natural Laws are neither more nor less than well- founded generalisations rooted in the solid ground of experience and spreading forth in the atmosphere of inference that rests thereon.