But that is not true. And first of all, are they such uncompromising realists as has been said? Are they absolutely refractory, I do not say to metaphysic, but at least to everything metaphysical?
Recall the name of Berkeley, born in Ireland doubtless, but immediately adopted by the English, who marked a natural and necessary stage in the development of English philosophy.
Is this not enough to show they are capable of making ascensions otherwise than in a captive balloon?
And to return to America, is not the Monist published at Chicago, that review which even to us seems bold and yet which finds readers?
And in mathematics? Do you think American geometers are concerned only about applications? Far from it. The part of the science they cultivate most devotedly is the theory of groups of substitutions, and under its most abstract form, the farthest removed from the practical.
Moreover, Dr. Halsted gives regularly each year a review of all productions relative to the non-Euclidean geometry, and he has about him a public deeply interested in his work. He has initiated this public into the ideas of Hilbert, and he has even written an elementary treatise on 'Rational Geometry,' based on the principles of the renowned German savant.
To introduce this principle into teaching is surely this time to burn all bridges of reliance upon sensory intuition, and this is, I confess, a boldness which seems to me almost rashness.
The American public is therefore much better prepared than has been thought for investigating the origin of the notion of space.
Moreover, to analyze this concept is not to sacrifice reality to I know not what phantom. The geometric language is after all only a language. Space is only a word that we have believed a thing. What is the origin of this word and of other words also? What things do they hide? To ask this is permissible; to forbid it would be, on the contrary, to be a dupe of words; it would be to adore a metaphysical idol, like savage peoples who prostrate themselves before a statue of wood without daring to take a look at what is within.
In the study of nature, the contrast between the Anglo-Saxon spirit and the Latin spirit is still greater.