SCIENTIFIC DABBLERS. 599 



volved ; defend yourself with arguments, not dogmatic assertions ; and 

 do not ask your adversaries for proofs stronger than those which you are 

 ready to give. Above all, remember that you yourself are but mortal, 

 and liable to err; and therefore that it is always within the bounds of 

 possibility that your antagonist may be in the right, and you in the 

 wrong. The man of science studies God's own handiwork; he ap- 

 proaches the truth reverently, yet fearlessly, seeking it for its own 

 sake ; and his conclusions cannot be lightly disregarded. Science may 

 throw more light upon theology than theology can ever throw upon sci- 

 ence. And the theologian who sincerely wishes to know and to spread 

 the highest and clearest truths, will do well to take at least some les- 

 sons from the interpreters of Nature, and in all cases to treat the doc- 

 trines of science with the respect which is always due to honesty. Un- 

 der all circumstances, whatever may be his private views and his de- 

 sires, he will find it the part of wisdom not to commit himself publicly 

 to either side of an unsettled question. Dogmatism on undecided 

 points is worse than foolish. 



Ev ery now and then we meet with certain scientific dabblers who 

 are silly through the medium of the newspapers. I refer to those un- 

 fortunate people who try to illustrate science with fanciful statistics. 

 Of late, one of these statistical paragraphs has been going the rounds 

 of the press. It treats of what the writer supposed to be physiological 

 chemistry. First come some estimates as to the number of pairs of 

 boots and the quantity of hats which might be made from the leather 

 and felt imagined by the author to be formed by some obscure chemi- 

 cal process in the stomach. This is utilitarian science with a ven- 

 geance, but is eclipsed shortly when the brilliant popularizer of sci- 

 entific knowledge asserts that a man of average size contains clay 

 enough to make a dozen large bricks, and consumes carbonate of lime 

 enough with his food to form a marble mantel-piece in a year ! The 

 estimates are really quite beautiful in their way, but are unfortunately 

 like the French definition of a crab. Certain French lexicographers 

 were one day hard at work, and had just defined a crab as " a little red 

 fish which walks backward." Cuvier, entering just then, was asked 

 what he thought of the definition. " Admirable ! " said he, " only the 

 crab is not a fish, it is not red, and it does not walk backward." I 

 cannot vouch for the authenticity of this anecdote, yet it serves very 

 well to illustrate the case in point. The newspaper scientist was about 

 as accurate in his knowledge as were the lexicographers especially 

 in the brick-making item ; for the two elements most characteristic of 

 clay, namely, silicon and aluminum, are wholly wanting in the human 

 system ; or, if present, they are in such small quantities as to be un- 

 discoverable by analysis. 



This example is sufficient to illustrate this particular kind of dab- 

 bling. Some thorough scientific man makes a discovery, which is brief- 

 ly alluded to in some foreign journal of popular science. The periodi- 



