of reasoning
to start with facts and to give names to the facts.

When Norton wandered into the intricacies of Kant, Kreis reminded him
that all good little German philosophies when they died went to Oxford. A
little later Norton reminded them of Hamilton's Law of Parsimony, the
application of which they immediately claimed for every reasoning process
of theirs. And Martin hugged his knees and exulted in it all. But
Norton was no Spencerian, and he, too, strove for Martin's philosophic
soul, talking as much at him as to his two opponents.

"You know Berkeley has never been answered," he said, looking directly at
Martin. "Herbert Spencer came the nearest, which was not very near. Even
the stanchest of Spencer's followers will not go farther. I was reading
an essay of Saleeby's the other day, and the best Saleeby could say was
that Herbert Spencer _nearly_ succeeded in answering Berkeley."

"You know what Hume said?" Hamilton asked. Norton nodded, but Hamilton
gave it for the benefit of the rest. "He said that Berkeley's arguments
admit of no answer and produce no conviction."

"In his, Hume's, mind," was the reply. "And Hume's mind was the same as
yours, with this difference: he was wise enough to admit there was no
answering Berkeley."

Norton was sensitive and excitable, though he never lost his head, while
Kreis and Hamilton were like a pair of cold-blooded savages, seeking out
tender places to prod and poke. As the evening grew late, Norton,
smarting under the repeated charges of being a metaphysician, clutching
his chair to keep from jumping to his feet, his gray eyes snapping and
his girlish face grown harsh and sure, made a grand attack upon their
position.

"All right, you Haeckelites, I may reason like a medicine man, but, pray,
how do you reason? You have nothing to stand on, you unscientific
dogmatists with your positive science which you are always lugging about
into places it has no right to be. Long before the school of
materialistic monism arose, the ground was removed so that there could be
no foundation. Locke was the man, John Locke. Two hundred years
ago--more than that, even in his 'Essay concerning the Human
Understanding,' he proved the non-existence of innate ideas. The best of
it is that that is precisely what you claim. To-night, again and again,
you have asserted the non-existence of innate ideas.

"And what does that mean? It means that you can never know ultimate
real