Pearson, and the responsible
author of the "elementary textbook," as he went on to explain,
was Lord Kelvin himself. Pearson shut out of science everything
which the nineteenth century had brought into it. He told his
scholars that they must put up with a fraction of the universe,
and a very small fraction at that -- the circle reached by the
senses, where sequence could be taken for granted -- much as the
deep-sea fish takes for granted the circle of light which he
generates. "Order and reason, beauty and benevolence, are
characteristics and conceptions which we find solely associated
with the mind of man." The assertion, as a broad truth, left
one's mind in some doubt of its bearing, for order and beauty
seemed to be associated also in the mind of a crystal, if one's
senses were to be admitted as judge; but the historian had no
interest in the universal truth of Pearson's or Kelvin's or
Newton's laws; he sought only their relative drift or direction,
and Pearson went on to say that these conceptions must stop:
"Into the chaos beyond sense-impressions we cannot scientifically
project them." We cannot even infer them: "In the chaos behind
sensations, in the 'beyond' of sense-impressions, we cannot infer
necessity, order or routine, for these are concepts formed by the
mind of man on this side of sense-impressions"; but we must infer
chaos: "Briefly chaos is all that science can logically assert of
the supersensuous.
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