SPECULATIVE SCIENCE. 163 



stupid arrogance of dogmatism, which it is the special function of sci- 

 ence to repress, has some of its most vulgar representatives in the 

 ranks of those who claim to be, not only votaries of science, but its 

 chosen protagonists and defenders. 



Some years ago Fechner, in the first edition of his " Atomenlehre," 

 printed an answer he had made to some one who objected to the theo- 

 ries of the physicists about atoms, ethers, forces, and so on. It was 

 something like this : " I have a handful of coins. You are not pleased 

 with the effigy and inscription, and advise me to throw them away ; 

 yet you offer me nothing to replace them but an empty purse." If 

 that speech had been made to me, I should have met it with this reply: 

 " The mischief is that your coins are spurious ; they are base metal. 

 Nevertheless, they may serve a good purpose as mere counters or 

 tokens, provided you never lose sight of the fact that they are nothing 

 more. But experience teaches that you do constantly lose sight of 

 that fact, and in a short time insist dogmatically that the coins are 

 of unquestionable intrinsic value. And, having found out that you 

 can manufacture any amount of them at little expense, you do what 

 all inflationists and debasers of the currency are in the habit of 

 doing : you flood the market with stuff which must inevitably bring 

 ruin upon the very man whom you have ensnared into the belief that 

 he can never have enough of it, viz., the laborer who is employed in 

 the hard work of producing the material out of which science is to be 

 constructed. So, if you are unable to procure genuine theoretical 

 specie to represent the scientific wealth you are intent on accumulat- 

 ing, and at the same time are unwilling to restrain your propensities 

 for manufacturing spurious coin and palming it off on yourself and 

 others as sterling cash, you had better carry your facts about in bas- 

 kets or bags, and resort to the ancient clumsy method of barter." 



I will not weary the reader by drawing upon the rich store-house 

 of theoretical chemistry for further illustration of the manner in which 

 provisional and tentative hypotheses are paraded as absolute finalities, 

 and results of experimental research are obscured instead of being ir- 

 radiated by theoretical conceits. I will content myself with a single 

 further reference to a very recent and very remarkable exemplification 

 of the proneness of the very ablest men of science to multiply enti- 

 ties and confound modes of physical interaction or forms of intellect- 

 ual apprehension with indestructible things. 



In the scientific journal, "Nature," for May 26, 1881 (vol. xxiv, p. 

 78), there is a communication from Professor Silvanus P. Thompson, 

 containing an extract from the preface to his then forthcoming book 

 "Elementary Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism," in which he says : 



The theory of electricity adopted throughout is, that electricity, whatever 

 its nature, is one, not two ; that electricity, whatever it may prove to be, is not 

 matter and is not energy ; that it resembles both matter and energy in one re- 

 spect, however, in that it can neither be created nor destroyed. 



