The attempt to discover the explanation of this phenomenon in the antithesis of “facts” and “theories” or “facts” and “ideas”—in the neglect among the ancients of the former, and their too exclusive attention to the latter—proves also to be too narrow, as well as open to the charge of vagueness. For in the first place, the antithesis is not complete. Facts and theories are not coordinate species. Theories, if true, are facts—a particular class of facts indeed, generally complex, and if a logical connection subsists between their constituents, have all the positive attributes of theories.
