“Yet the thought of Aristotle ruled Europe for twelve centuries,” Dr. Ballingford announced pompously.  “And Aristotle was a metaphysician.”

Dr. Ballingford glanced around the table and was rewarded by nods and smiles of approval.

“Your illustration is most unfortunate,” Ernest replied.  “You refer to a very dark period in human history.  In fact, we call that period the Dark Ages.  A period wherein science was raped by the metaphysicians, wherein physics became a search for the Philosopher’s Stone, wherein chemistry became alchemy, and astronomy became astrology.  Sorry the domination of Aristotle’s thought!”

Dr. Ballingford looked pained, then he brightened up and said: 

“Granted this horrible picture you have drawn, yet you must confess that metaphysics was inherently potent in so far as it drew humanity out of this dark period and on into the illumination of the succeeding centuries.”

“Metaphysics had nothing to do with it,” Ernest retorted.

“What?” Dr. Hammerfield cried.  “It was not the thinking and the speculation that led to the voyages of discovery?”

“Ah, my dear sir,” Ernest smiled, “I thought you were disqualified.  You have not yet picked out the flaw in my definition of philosophy.  You are now on an unsubstantial basis.  But it is the way of the metaphysicians, and I forgive you.  No, I repeat, metaphysics had nothing to do with it.  Bread and butter, silks and jewels, dollars and cents, and, incidentally, the closing up of the overland trade-routes to India, were the things that caused the voyages of discovery.  With the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, the Turks blocked the way of the caravans to India.  The traders of Europe had to find another route.  Here was the original cause for the voyages of discovery.  Columbus sailed to find a new route to the Indies.  It is so stated in all the history books.  Incidentally, new facts were learned about the nature, size, and form of the earth, and the Ptolemaic system went glimmering.”

Dr. Hammerfield snorted.

“You do not agree with me?” Ernest queried.  “Then wherein am I wrong?”

“I can only reaffirm my position,” Dr. Hammerfield retorted tartly.  “It is too long a story to enter into now.”

“No story is too long for the scientist,” Ernest said sweetly.  “That is why the scientist gets to places.  That is why he got to America.”

I shall not describe the whole evening, though it is a joy to me to recall every moment, every detail, of those first hours of my coming to know Ernest Everhard.

Battle royal raged, and the ministers grew red-faced and excited, especially at the moments when Ernest called them romantic philosophers, shadow-projectors, and similar things.  And always he checked them back to facts.  “The fact, man, the irrefragable fact!” he would proclaim triumphantly, when he had brought one of them a cropper.  He bristled with facts.  He tripped them up with facts, ambuscaded them with facts, bombarded them with broadsides of facts.