Yet many learned professors do continue to confound them. Why? In some cases it is, perhaps, not too much to say that the holder of a university degree is not necessarily in possession of all the facts. And very few of us, professors or not, are without prejudice. We must remember the Idol of the Tribe, the capacity of the mind to become so clouded by passion and biased zeal that it sheds unwelcome evidence as readily as a duck’s back sheds water. It was Herbert Spencer who first popularized the notion that materialistic science could explain everything. It had not been invented with an eye to explaining everything--only a few things, with the hope of getting hold of them in a way that might be useful. But so great was the success of the early applications of the method that the temptation to turn it into a synthetic philosophy was too great for mortal to resist. Spencer had the advantage of not knowing very much. His early education had been neglected. And his powers of invention were practically without limit. It is always easier to explain when not burdened with too much first-hand knowledge. Hearsay, and what we learn from books, is the stuff for theories. But the facts which have entered intimately into our own lives are stubborn. We are too familiar with their edges to fancy that they fit into whatever space may be contrived for them. Ignorance is satisfied with almost any account. Those who deal a good deal with retorts and crucibles may speak of men and women as retorts and crucibles. This is impossible to those whose knowledge of human nature has made them distinguished in affairs. The books of a closet economist satisfy everybody but business men. If you have spent much of your time in observing, say, the behavior of rats on inclined planes, you may come to think of animals as machines. One such investigator has recently discovered that rats are “negatively geotropic.” That is, they are afraid of falling; and when the plane is tipped will scramble away from the lower edge. A pet rat would have taught him not only this, but that, under kind treatment, the rat is one of the cleverest and most affectionate four-footed creatures in existence. A scientist bores holes in a dog’s cheek to measure his autocoid secretion; or he removes part of a dog’s brain, scratches the animal’s leg, notes that a kick results, and comes out of the laboratory convinced that we all walk--not with a desire to get anywhere, but because of the irritating effects of the ground on the soles of the feet. Go tell that story to a man who knows dogs!