arity
with a mass of experience in which, after long groping and guess-work,
the truth has ultimately been discovered, and been recognised as 'very
good.' It is illustrated, for instance, by the words in which Tyndall
closes the first edition of his book on Sound, wherein, after
explaining Helmholtz's brilliant theory of Corti's organ and the
musical mechanism of the ear,--a theory which, amid the difficulties of
actual observation, was necessarily at first saturated with hypothesis,
and is not even yet fully verified,--he says:--

"Within the ears of men, and without their knowledge or
contrivance, this lute of 3000 strings has existed for ages,
accepting the music of the outer world, and rendering it fit for
reception by the brain.... I do not ask you to consider these views
as established, but only as probable. They present the phenomena in
a connected and intelligible form; and should they be doomed to
displacement by a more correct or comprehensive theory, it will
assuredly be found that the wonder is not diminished by the
substitution of the truth."

CHAPTER VI

MIND AND MATTER

What, then, is the probable essence of truth in Professor Haeckel's
philosophy? for it is not to be supposed that the speculations of an
eminent man are baseless, or that he has been led to his view of what
he conceives to be the truth by some wholly erroneous path; his
intuitive convictions are to be respected, for they are based on a far
wider experience and knowledge of fact than is given to the average
man; and for the average man to consider it likely that there is no
foundation whatever for the life convictions of a great specialist is
as foolish as to suppose it probable that they are certain and
infallible, or that they are uncritically to be accepted even in
regions beyond those over which his jurisdiction extends.

First as to the "law of substance," by which he sets so much store; the
fact which he is really, though indistinctly, trying to emphasise, is
what I have preferred to formulate as "the persistence of the really
existent," see page 34; and, with that modification, we can agree with
Haeckel, or with what I take to be his inner meaning, to some extent.
We may all fairly agree, I think, that whatever really and fundamentally
_exists_ must, so far as bare existence is concerned, be independent of
time. It may go through many changes, and thus have a history; that is
to say,