Page:Truth and Error (1898).djvu/18

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8
TRUTH AND ERROR

is associated with matter. In doing this we shall endeavor to discriminate between the certitudes and fallacies current in human opinion.

In the intoxication of illusion facts seem cold and colorless, and the wrapt dreamer imagines that he dwells in a realm above science—in a world which as he thinks absorbs truth as the ocean the shower, and transforms it into a flood of philosophy. Feverish dreams are supposed to be glimpses of the unknown and unknowable, and the highest and dearest aspiration is to be absorbed in this sea of speculation. Nothing is worthy of contemplation but the mysterious. Yet the simple and the true remain. The history of science is the history of the discovery of the simple and the true; in its progress fallacies are dispelled and certitudes remain.