352 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



bocker's New York" or Macaulay's " England," 

 resemble history. And when the explanation is 

 bombastic as well as vague, its type is the same 

 as that of the well-known speech of Sergeant 

 Buzfuz. 



One ludicrous feature of the "high-falutin" 

 style is that if you adopt it you throw away all 

 your most formidable ammunition on the smaller 

 game, and have nothing proportionate left for the 

 larger. It is as if you used a solid shot from an 

 81-ton gun upon a single skirmisher! As I have 

 already said, you waste your grandest terms, such 

 as huge, vast, enormous, tremendous, etc., on 

 your mere millions or billions ; and then what is 

 left for the poor trillions ? The true lesson to be 

 learned from this is, that such terms are alto- 

 gether inadmissible in science. 



But even if we could suppose a speaker to 

 use these magnificent words as a genuine descrip- 

 tion of the impression made ou himself by certain 

 phenomena, you must remember that he is de- 

 scribing not what is known of the objective fact 

 (which, except occasionally from a biographic 

 point of view, is what the listener really wants), 

 but the more or less inadequate subjective im- 

 pression which it has produced, or which he de- 

 sires you to think it has produced, on " what he 

 is pleased to call his mind." Whether it be his 

 own mind, or that of some imaginary individual, 

 matters not. To do this, except perhaps when 

 lecturing on psychology, is to be unscientific. 

 True scientific teaching, I cannot too often re- 

 peat, requires that the facts and their necessary 

 consequences alone should be stated (and illus- 

 trated if required) as simply as possible. The 

 impression they are to produce on the mind of 

 the reader, or hearer, is then to be left entirely to 

 himself. No one has any right to suppose, much 

 less to take for granted, that his own notions, 

 whether they be " so-called poetic instincts " (to 

 use the lowest term of contempt) or half-compre- 

 hended and imperfectly - expressed feelings of 

 wonder, admiration, or awe, are either more true 

 to fact or more sound in foundation than those 

 of the least scientific among his readers or his 

 audience. When he does so he resembles a mere 

 leader of a claque. " Hiss here, my friends ; ap- 

 plaud there ! Three cheers more ! Three groans ! 

 Nine times nine ! " And so forth ad nauseam. 

 If your minds cannot relish simple food, they are 

 not in that healthy state which is required for 

 the study of science. Healthy mental appetite 

 needs only hunger-sauce. That it always has in 

 plenty, and repletion is impossible. 



But you must remember that language cannot 



be simple unless it be definite ; though sometimes, 

 from the very nature of the case, it may be very 

 difficult to understand, even when none but the 

 simplest terms are used. Multiple meanings for 

 technical words are totally foreign to the spirit of 

 true science. When an altogether new idea has 

 to be expressed, a new word must be coined for 

 it. None but a blockhead could object to a new 

 word for a new idea. And the habitual use of 

 non-scientific words in the teaching of science be- 

 trays ignorance, or (at the very least) willful in- 

 definiteness. 



Do not fancy, however, that you will have 

 very many new words to learn. A month of 

 Botany or of Entomology, as these are too often 

 taught, will introduce you to a hundred-fold as 

 many new and strange terms as you will require 

 in the whole course of natural philosophy; and, 

 among them, to many words of a far more " diffi- 

 cult complexion" than any with which, solely for 

 the sake of definiteness, we find ourselves con- 

 strained to deal. 



But you will easily reconcile yourselves to the 

 necessity for new terms if you bear in mind that 

 these not only secure to us that definiteness with- 

 out which science is impossible, but at the same 

 time enable us to get rid of an enormous number 

 of wholly absurd stock-phrases which you find in 

 almost every journal you take up, wherever at 

 least common physical phenomena are referred to. 

 When we are told that a building was " struck 

 by the electric fluid" we may have some difficulty 

 in understanding the process ; but we cannot be 

 at all surprised to learn that it was immediately 

 thereafter " seized upon by the devouring element, 

 which raged unchecked till the whole was reduced 

 to ashes." I have no fault to find with the penny- 

 a-liner who writes such things as these : it is all 

 directly in the way of his business, and he has 

 been trained to it. Perhaps his graphic descrip- 

 tions may occasically rise even to poetry. But 

 when I meet with anything like this — and there 

 are but too many works, professedly on natural 

 philosophy, which are full of such things — I know 

 that I am not dealing with science. 



A wild and plaintive wail for definiteness often 

 comes from those writers and lecturers who are 

 habitually the most vague. A few crocodile tears 

 are shed, appearances are preserved, and they 

 plunge at once into greater mistiness of verbosity 

 than before. 



Considering the actual state of the great ma- 

 jority at least of our schools and our elementary 

 text books, I should prefer that you came here 

 completely untaught in physical science. You 



