7 6S THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Synthetic Philosophy," as well as those which Mr. Mozley entertained 

 in his early days, were in some way derived from my father. Were 

 this true, the implication would be that during the last five-and-twenty 

 years I have been allowing myself to be credited with ideas which are 

 not my own. And, since this is entirely untrue, I can not be expected 

 to let it pass unnoticed. If I do, I tacitly countenance an error, and 

 tacitly admit an act by no means creditable to me. 



I should be the last to underestimate my indebtedness to my 

 father, for whom I have great admiration, as will be seen when, here- 

 after, there comes to be published a sketch of him which I long ago 

 prepared in rough draft. But this indebtedness was general and not 

 special an indebtedness for habits of thought encouraged rather than 

 for ideas communicated. I distinctly trace to him an ingrained tend- 

 ency to inquire for causes causes, I mean, of the physical class. 

 Though far from having himself abandoned supernaturalism, yet the 

 bias toward naturalism was strong in him, and was, I doubt not, com- 

 municated (though rather by example than by precept) to others he 

 taught as it was to me. But while admitting, and indeed asserting, 

 that the tendency toward naturalistic interpretation of things was fos- 

 tered in me by him, as probably also in Mr. Mozley, yet I am not aware 

 that any of those results of' naturalistic interpretation distinctive of 

 my works are traceable to him. 



Were the general reader in the habit of criticising each statement 

 he meets, he might be expected to discover in the paragraph quoted 

 above from Mr. Mozley reasons for skepticism. When, for example, 

 he found my books described as occupying several yards of library- 

 shelves, while in fact they occupy less than two feet, he might be led 

 to suspect that other statements, made with like regard for effective- 

 ness rather than accuracy, are misleading. A reperusal of the last 

 part of the paragraph might confirm his suspicion. Observing that, 

 along with the allegation of " family resemblance," the closing sen- 

 tence admits that the course of human affairs as conceived by Mr. 

 Mozley was the reverse in direction to the course alleged by me 

 observing that in this only respect in which Mr. Mozley specifies his 

 view it is so fundamentally anti-evolutionary as to be irreconcilable 

 with the evolutionary view he might have further doubts raised. 

 But the general reader, not pausing to consider, mostly accepts with- 

 out hesitation what a writer tells him. 



Even scientific readers, even readers familiar with the contents of 

 my books, can not, I fear, be trusted so to test Mr. Mozley's statement 

 as to recognize its necessary erroneousness ; though a little thought 

 would show them this. They would have but to recall the cardinal 

 ideas developed throughout the series of volumes I have published, to 

 become conscious that these ideas are necessarily of much later origin 

 than the period to which Mr. Mozley's account refers. Though, in 

 Rumford's day and before, an advance had been made toward the doc- 



