fts and weighs, mercilessly piling a dustheap beyond
Mr. Boffin's wildest dreams, and rescuing, on the other hand, from
the old wastebasket many discarded scraps of real but till now
unacknowledged value. Busy in gathering stores of its own, it is able
to find time for digesting those bequeathed to it, and for executing
both tasks with a good deal of care. It brings skepticism to its aid
in both, and subjects new and old conclusions to almost equally close
analysis. Each new pebble it picks up upon the shore of the Newtonian
ocean it holds up square and askew to the light, and cross-examines
color, texture and form. Now and then, being but mortal after all, it
chuckles too hastily over a brilliant find, but the blunder is not apt
to wait long for correction. Just now it appears to be overhauling its
accounts in the item of science, taking stock of its discoveries in
that field, balancing bad against good, and determining profit and
loss. Some once-promising entries have to undergo a black mark, while
a few claims that were despaired of come to the fore. This proceeding
is only preparatory, however, to a new departure on a bolder scale.
Scientific progress knows only partial checks. Its movement is that of
a force _en echelon_: one line may get into trouble and recoil, while
the others and the general front continue to advance. Theory does not
profess to be certainty. It is only tentative, and subject necessarily
to frequent errors, for the elimination of which the severely
skeptical spirit of the laws to which it is now held furnishes the
best appliance. Modern science possesses an internal _vis
medicatrix_ which prevents its suffering seriously from excesses
or irregularities. When it ventures to touch the shield of the
Unknowable, it is only with the butt of its lance, and the inevitable
overthrow is accepted with the least modicum of humiliation.

In that science which assumes to marshal all the others, philosophic
and judicial history, ours ought to be the foremost age, if only
because it has the aid of all the others. It does more, however, than
they can be said to have contemplated. It widens the scope of history,
and more precisely formalizes its functions. It makes of the old
chroniclers so many moral statisticians, fully utilizing at the same
time their services as collectors of material facts. The deductions
thus arrived at it aims to test by the methods of the exact sciences.
It invites, in a certain degree,