As Ernest talked he seemed in a fine passion; his face glowed, his eyes snapped and flashed, and his chin and jaw were eloquent with aggressiveness.  But it was only a way he had.  It always aroused people.  His smashing, sledge-hammer manner of attack invariably made them forget themselves.  And they were forgetting themselves now.  Bishop Morehouse was leaning forward and listening intently.  Exasperation and anger were flushing the face of Dr. Hammerfield.  And others were exasperated, too, and some were smiling in an amused and superior way.  As for myself, I found it most enjoyable.  I glanced at father, and I was afraid he was going to giggle at the effect of this human bombshell he had been guilty of launching amongst us.

“Your terms are rather vague,” Dr. Hammerfield interrupted.  “Just precisely what do you mean when you call us metaphysicians?”

“I call you metaphysicians because you reason metaphysically,” Ernest went on.  “Your method of reasoning is the opposite to that of science.  There is no validity to your conclusions.  You can prove everything and nothing, and no two of you can agree upon anything.  Each of you goes into his own consciousness to explain himself and the universe.  As well may you lift yourselves by your own bootstraps as to explain consciousness by consciousness.”

“I do not understand,” Bishop Morehouse said.  “It seems to me that all things of the mind are metaphysical.  That most exact and convincing of all sciences, mathematics, is sheerly metaphysical.  Each and every thought-process of the scientific reasoner is metaphysical.  Surely you will agree with me?”

“As you say, you do not understand,” Ernest replied.  “The metaphysician reasons deductively out of his own subjectivity.  The scientist reasons inductively from the facts of experience.  The metaphysician reasons from theory to facts, the scientist reasons from facts to theory.  The metaphysician explains the universe by himself, the scientist explains himself by the universe.”

“Thank God we are not scientists,” Dr. Hammerfield murmured complacently.

“What are you then?” Ernest demanded.

“Philosophers.”

“There you go,” Ernest laughed.  “You have left the real and solid earth and are up in the air with a word for a flying machine.  Pray come down to earth and tell me precisely what you do mean by philosophy.”

“Philosophy is—­” (Dr. Hammerfield paused and cleared his throat)—­“something that cannot be defined comprehensively except to such minds and temperaments as are philosophical.  The narrow scientist with his nose in a test-tube cannot understand philosophy.”

Ernest ignored the thrust.  It was always his way to turn the point back upon an opponent, and he did it now, with a beaming brotherliness of face and utterance.