capitals, and by the expansion of these into eloquent speechifying and sermonizing, by platform and printing press propaganda, by whirlwind campaigns of "mere vocables", by loud discussion and universal voting on the issue. The historian of the future looking for the salient feature of the present times will, I think, single out as more astonishing than anything else this world wide delusion, still obdurately holding its ground in spite of the crushing refutation just given by the war, that the affairs of the world can be managed by the mere interchange of speech between human individuals, by the mere process of saying things, saying them often enough, and saying them altogether, and then voting them true. "I am getting better and better; I am improving in all respects:" repeat the magic formula often enough and the thing will be done. "What was this," the future historian will say, "what was this, blazoned about as the cure for human ills, and the last revelation of science, but a pathetic witness to the general hypnosis that lay upon that generation, to the foul bewitchment that possessed them, to the blind faith that speechifying could be made to do the business of life, that the thing said determined the thing done? No sooner was the war over than the civilized nations, untaught by its stern rebuke, embraced once more the very lie which had just brought them to the verge of utter calamity and well-nigh undone them. Paper schemes for the reconstruction of the world were poured out by the thousand, all at variance, and each with the tag appended 'Codlin's the friend, not Short'; not one of which had ever the faintest chance of materializing into a fact. 'Go to, now,' they cried, 'let us have a great world palaver and settle everything. Our national palavers have indeed made a sorry mess of our affairs; so let us palaver internationally henceforth, on a polyglot basis, with interpreters at hand to reduce the Babel to some common tongue, which most of us imperfectly understand, and so mend all! 'Peace, peace,' shall be the watchword. The palaverers shall repeat it, internationally; they shall duly chant the formula 'We are at peace; we are becoming day by day more peaceable in all respects,' and peace will be. Meanwhile let whoso will remove his neighbor's landmark. Let whoso will bake rotten bricks. The international palaver, backed by adequate 'world views'-of which we

have dozens ready to suit all fancies-shall henceforth manage this world, shall draw up a new Ten Commandments, and we shall be free to deal with the old Ten-as we have long dealt with them."

God grant that the future historian's description of us may end there! God grant that the next paragraph may not run thus: "And so while they were all busy with these 'world views' and holding wordy tournaments as to which of their formulæ for 'mending the world while you wait' would mend it soonest, the Second Great War broke out and they were all undone."

I have fulfilled the promise with which this article began; the promise, namely, that I would produce a manifest inconsistency and make myself unpleasant into the bargain. I have used the tongue to expose its own aptitude to speak falsehoods—that is the inconsistency—and I have declared my firm belief that we are all befooled-that is the offense. I apologize for neither. If any man knows of a method for breaking the Great Enchantment which does not involve both the inconsistency and the offense, let him step forth and show us what it is. I leave the problem to the psychologists who have still to solve the problem of "the Cretan liars."

Meanwhile I have a word to those fellow adventurers of mine who are engaged in that great enterprise known as Education. "See to it," I would say, "that you impress upon the rising generation this elemental truth, that the world is built up not by the things men say with their tongues, but by the work they do with their hands. Truth is found, primarily, not in things said but in things done. That every man shall enjoy his day's work and a good article come out of it-there can be no civilization on any other terms. Ground your citizenship upon that. And remember the Ten Commandments."

L. P. JACKS.

WORLD TROUBLE AND REALISM

BY VERNON KELLOGG

I

THE scientist tries to be a realist. Face to face with phenomena he would like to understand he assures himself that, concerning these phenomena, there are some ascertainable facts to be discovered, some probable conjectures to be made and some wild guesses to be hazarded. He goes first after the ascertainable facts; then he is likely to make some conjectures that seem reasonable, and he may even, if he is of a certain temperament, hazard a few wild guesses. But first he goes after the ascertainable facts.

He may be temperamentally idealist in his outlook on the world. He may be a man of vision-if he is not he will never be a great scientist. His vision may determine for him ideals of human life, personal and social human life, which he thinks human individuals and the human race should strive to attain. But in this striving for ideals he will be realist in method. He will test the methods and measures suggested by other men-and by himself by his understanding of realities.

Ideal in aim, but realist in method. That is the scientific man. It is not what he studies but how he studies that distinguishes the scientific man from the non-scientific man. The majority of professed or professional scientific men do, to be sure, confine most of their study to the fields of the natural sciences, such as mathematics and astronomy and physics and chemistry and geology and biology. But there are scientific men whose field is in the humanities. There are thoroughgoing scientific students of political economy, political science, sociology, statesmanship, diplomacy, politics in general. But there are not many of them. They can be distinguished from other students or workers or dabblers in these fields by their method, their method of realism.

I have been much interested in reading the earlier papers in this series. They have impressed on me more strongly than ever the fact that science is different from sociology and ethics and religion and philosophy primarily in its method. That is why there are so few real scientific men in the fields of humanistics. It is much harder to apply rigorously the method of science to the study of mankind than to the study of nitrogen and the boll weevil. Human behavior is almost infinitely more varied and complex in its possibilities and manifestations than the behavior of Amaba. Human psychology is very much more difficult to get at scientifically than the tropisms of the Protozoa and the instincts of the social insects. But if it and human sociology and human economics and human politics (in its comprehensive sense) are to be got at soundly and certainly, it will have to be, some time or another, by the methods of science: not by the short cut methods of reasonable conjecture and wild guess.

Now the world, facing a sea of industrial, economic and political trouble, is dazed not alone by the quantity of the trouble but by the quality of it. It is dazed by the difficulty it is experiencing in trying to understand just why all this trouble should be; just what the essential elements in it are; just what mysterious perversity or weakness of human mental and spiritual make-up brings it about. For the trouble is obviously man-made trouble -unless we accept the fatalistic conception of our being the mere playthings of cosmic forces or influences quite outside our understanding or, at least, control.

But if this trouble is man-made there ought to be possible mancontrived remedies. To devise these it will be necessary to know the real elements of the trouble. And the method of wild guesses or even reasonable conjectures is not the method to adopt in trying to understand matters. We must go first after the ascertainable facts. We must adopt the method of science.

I should like to believe the confident statement that the adoption of the Golden Rule by all of us would immediately solve all of our problems. And then I should like to believe that somebody can get us all to adopt the Golden Rule as governor of our behavior. But I cannot fully believe either of these things. Different ones among us would interpret the Golden Rule differ

ently, and even Christ could not convince all of His hearers to become His followers.

I should like to understand how Russia could ever get into the impossible state it is in. No reasonable conjecture or even wild guess made before the fact would ever have pictured with any accuracy the present impossible situation-which is nevertheless possible because it now exists. I hardly accept as real the reality that I saw in Russia last autumn. I saw things as seemingly unreal, as topsy-turvy, as Alice saw in Wonderland. But I, and others, did see them and it was on a basis of these ascertained realities that Mr. Hoover, who is a scientific man, acted promptly with the result of saving the lives of several million men, women and children.

On the basis of facts that could be ascertained Mr. Hoover could and did act with the result of ameliorating great and distressing trouble. But he is urged all the time now, on a basis of conjecture and guess, to act, or use his influence to have the American Government act, in other ways that would, if the guess is correct, conjecturally further relieve trouble in Russia. But, consistently scientific, he asks for the ascertainable facts on which to base proper action. He cannot commit himself, or help commit the Government, to action on a basis of guess and conjecture. Indeed, the situation in Russia is an outstanding example of the difficulties of knowing things in the realm of human psychology and human behavior in the way the scientific man insists on knowing them, or trying to know them.

But difficult or not, the solution of the problems of economic and political trouble in Russia and world trouble in general will depend on getting at the realities in a scientific way. There must be a basis of realism for planning and carrying out any activity to ameliorate this trouble. That is what I mean to suggest by the title of my paper.

II

What are the criteria of reality? What tests can we apply to things as they seem to determine things as they are? This is no simple and perhaps no certain matter. But there are some grounds for confidence concerning it. The scientific man has a