NEWSPAPERS AND EXACT THINKING *

When President Gilman did me the honor to ask me to address you on this occasion, I felt some reluctance in undertaking the rôle of a Johns Hopkins Commencement orator. But upon considering that this is not only the first, but in all probability the last occasion on which I am to appear before the students and friends of the Johns Hopkins University, I felt that I could not let it go by.

As most of you probably know, I am about to make a change in my occupation-in one aspect perhaps the most extreme change that it is possible for a man to make in his mental atmosphere. Mathematics is the domain of the most exact and rigorous thinking of which the human mind is capable; I fear you will agree only too readily with me in pronouncing journalism to be the field in which loose and inexact thinking is most at home. This is in a great measure unavoidable from the nature of the case; and yet the contrast I have just mentioned seems to give appropriateness to the subject to which I shall venture to ask your attention for a few minutes-the need of exact thinking in the discussions of actual life.

Mathematics has been from the most ancient times the best exemplar of exact reasoning that the human race has possessed; physics and chemistry and the

* Address delivered at the Commencement of the Johns Hopkins University, June 13, 1895.

other natural sciences have in modern times approached as nearly to the perfection of mathematics as the nature of their subject matter permits; scientific philology and archæology have demonstrated how much can be accomplished by rigorous methods in domains more nearly related to man's daily interests; but in the discussions which bear directly upon human affairs, which determine the action of legislatures and the votes of citizens, it can hardly be said that the requirements of sound thinking are as a general rule fulfilled in a greater measure in our time than in the days before science had won its splendid modern conquests.

And indeed any near approach to the exactness of scientific methods can not be expected. Time is an essential element in the development of scientific knowledge. Scientific truth can afford to wait indefinitely for its discovery and its proclamation. A space of twenty years intervened between the writing of Darwin's first unpublished notes on evolution and the publication of his Origin of Species; and he was neglecting no duty to the world by occupying that period in perfecting and enlarging his knowledge of the facts bearing on the doctrine of natural selection. Every one knows how long Newton allowed his discovery of the principle of gravitation to remain unpublished on account of an apparent discrepancy in his data. In politics all this is totally different. Ten years from now Mr. Cleveland's opinions on the silver question will possess very slight interest; today they constitute perhaps the most potent single force now at work in determining the material welfare of this country.

a certain course of action he must a course by such arguments as he can co can not afford to wait for more perfect

But while considerations of this kind things they do not excuse everything. excuse for making use of arguments w interests are concerned which, employed domain of intellectual activity, would s as an utter incompetent or charlatan. be able to command demonstration; bu know what demonstration is. We may to test our conclusions by following t their remotest consequences; but we sh be warned that there is something wro if they lead at once and obviously to ab We may not be able to obtain and to con tical data in sufficient completeness to s tion definitely; but it is a reproach intelligence and a disparagement of readers if we do not refrain from dra reaching conclusions from manifestly data.

We have not to go far to find illustr these faults, committed too not merely scribblers but by men of intellect and

who, in reasoning upon anything else than the great questions which affect human interests and passions, would be quite incapable of such shallowness. Take as an example the course of an able advocate of the gold standard on the silver question. When many years ago it was proposed to coin from two to four million silver dollars a month, this authority warned the country that if this legislation was passed we might very speedily find gold going to a premium and our whole financial system disturbed. A number of years passed by; we kept on coining from two to four million silver dollars a month, and our financial system showed no sign of injury. Then, strange to say, this same authority actually ridiculed the advocates of silver for attempting to bring us down to a silver standard by such means, and said they might as well give up the attempt, since experience had shown that the purchase and coinage of a few million silver dollars a month would never disturb the gold basis of our currency. The observance of the simplest requirements of exact thinking would have prevented this blunder; there had never been any means of estimating how soon the effect of the restricted coinage of silver dollars would be felt as a disturbing factor in our system; and the experience of the first ten or twelve years showed absolutely nothing. In point of fact, at the end of fifteen years the effect came with great suddenness, and all opponents of the silver standard insisted on the imperative necessity of an immediate stoppage of silver purchases. All that at any time could have been justly asserted was that this coinage had a tendency to bring us down to a silver basis, and that

if continued long enough it would have this effect. That it had not done so and had not shown any perceptible sign of doing so at a given time was no more proof of the falseness of this position than the fact of a seed not sprouting in a week is proof that it will always remain unfruitful.

Another instance of precisely the same kind may be given in connection with the same question. The provision of law for the purchase of silver was repealed under pressure of the panic and with a view to restoring prosperity. Prosperity did not return immediately, and indeed we are all agreed that it has been very slow in returning. Does that show that no good was accomplished by the repeal? Is there any telling how much worse our situation might have been had the repeal not been effected? Obviously when the arrangements of industry and commerce have become so profoundly disturbed as they were during the crisis of 1893, a considerable time must go by before things can be restored to their normal condition. And yet not only the humble wielders of the pen, but Senators of the United States and other exalted persons, were not ashamed of going about with the puerile claim that experience had demonstrated that the repeal had been useless. In any branch of science anyone who had no better idea than this implies of the nature of proof and of what is meant by the terms force, tendency, cause, would be laughed down, not replied to.

It is the signal merit of the founders of the classical English political economy, which it has recently been so much the fashion to belittle and deride, that they kept constantly before their minds