partiality which we are sure will be considered the very highest that any earnest seeker after truth could possibly desire or expect.

Now, it is clear that a 'Grammar of Science' does not and cannot concern itself with the contents of science any more than an English grammar deals with English literature; hut simply lays down, in a succinct form, the methods and limits of scientific inquiry. The present work, however, is even narrower and more circumspect than the reader might naturally suppose, for it is devoted to proving that sciencephysical science, of course-has no contents to inquire about. This is evidently the very book we want, and Professor Karl Pearson, of University College, London, deserves our heartiest thanks for his assistance in our search after a Belief in Nothing. Let us see how he achieves his results.

To begin with, we invite the attention of our readers to the following proposition, which occurs on p. 72:

"We may infer what we cannot verify by direct sense-impression only when the inference is from known

things to unknown things of the like nature in similar surroundings.

"Thus, we may not infer an infinite Consciousness outside the physical surroundings of finite Consciousness; we may not infer a man in the moon, however like in nature to ourselves, because the physical surroundings in the moon are not such as we find man in here."

Clearly, then, we may not infer the existence of a Supreme Being unless we first postulate a nervous system for Him; for "Consciousness has no meaning beyond nervous systems apart from our own; it is illogical to assert that all matter is conscious, still more that consciousness can exist outside matter" (p. 91).

Nor may we infer the existence of a man in the moon, because there is neither air nor water there; still less may we infer a moon-man to whom air and water are unnecessary, because we have no experience of such beings. Similarly, a race of individuals who had never cast net or line into the sea would be illogical in assuming the possible existence of lobsters, whales, and fish, seeing that their only experience of living creatures was confined to such as would promptly

die of suffocation if immersed beneath the waves. It is evident that, in this instance, supposing them to have been illogical, they would, nevertheless, have been right, for it by no means follows that a belief which is irresistible is therefore true; but that is nothing to the point, while the intrusion of uncouth facts into an argument dealing strictly with abstract generalities is very obviously an impertinence.

Professor Pearson then proceeds to show that all our so-called knowledge is purely and entirely subjective. He compares the conscious Ego to a clerk in a Central Telephone Exchange, who has never been outside it, and knows nothing of the external world beyond the messages he receives and transmits-never, in fact, being able to get nearer to his customers than his own end of the telephone-wire. In a word, we have no knowledge whatever of the nature of the world alleged to lie around us. All we can know are sense-impressions; that is, the Universe (so called) constitutes "a sphere which we have recognized [supra] as unknown and unknowable." Of course, the proposition is self-evident, and

the way in which the Professor rubs it in fills us with excited anticipation as to what is to

come next.

"The laws, if we can speak of laws, of this sphere must be as unknown as its contents, and therefore to talk of its contents as producing sense-impressions is an unwarranted inference, for we are asserting cause and effect-a law of phenomena or sense-impressions-to hold in a region beyond our experience. We know ourselves, and we know around us an impenetrable wall of sense-impressions. There is no necessity, nay, not even logic, in the statement that behind sense-impressions there are things in themselves producing senseimpressions. It is, indeed, an unjustifiable extension of the term knowledge to apply it to something which cannot be part of the mind's contents" (p. 81).

This is most encouraging. Professor Pearson evidently means business, and if we only follow him closely enough, we shall soon reach our goal. To say that we are hemmed in by an impenetrable wall of sense-impressions is good; but to add that we are totally unjustified in inferring objective existences beyond, which produce those sense-impressions, is excellent. former statement is obvious even to that typical

The

common-sense Philistine 'the man in the street'; the latter has all the surprise, the audacity, the exquisite flavour of paradox, so grateful to a jaded intellectual palate. It is not only illogical to say that we have any knowledge of the world; it is illogical, it is illegitimate, to infer that there is any world at all-to say that the senseimpressions we are conscious of are the result of any producing cause. The venerable axiom that every effect must have a cause is thus abolished; it is the recognition of an effect that has and can have no cause whatever that alone

is logical and scientific. We are conscious of a certain sense-impression, and we say, 'I see the sun'; but it is illegitimate to infer that the sun actually and objectively exists. As we write, we hear the sound of wind and waves and rain outside the windows; but we are not permitted to say that the rain is really falling, and the wind blowing great guns-no, not even if we are rash enough to go outside ourselves, and let the rain wet us to the skin, and the wind blow our umbrella inside out. For "our mind is absolutely confined within its nerve-exchange;