THE TESTIMONY OF SCIENCE.
By Ambrose Bierce
A CAVE bat was describing the outside world. “It is a much larger cavern than this,” he said. “The walls are of onyx, the roof is of ice, the floor is probably silver. Gold stalactites depend from above and copper stalagmites rise below. We don’t know the exact age of these formations. There is a river that flows up-hill and has fishes that are parallelopipedons. They are believed to have eyes.” “Fishes with eyes?” squeaked the other bats; “that is manifestly impossible!” “Science has no answer to the caviling of ignorance. The bats there are seven feet long, cheerful in disposition and most amiably spotted with blue. They are very wise and do not die.” “None of us has ever been out there, none of them has ever been in here,” cried a bat from the darkest and most distant chamber of the cave; “how is all this learned?” “By the scientific method of inevitable inference,” was the reply. —Ambrose Bierce.