754 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of his work without resenting it as personal. I well remember the 

 late excellent William Hopkins describing to me his astonishment 

 when, at the meeting of the British Association at York, a purely sci- 

 entific remark of his on Forbes's glacier theory was turned, with sud- 

 den acerbity, into a personal matter. It is of a discussion arising out 

 of this remark that Principal Forbes writes thus : " We had a post- 

 poned discussion on glaciers on Saturday morning, when Hopkins and 

 I did battle, and I am sorry to say I felt it exceedingly ; it discomposed 

 my nerves and made me very uncomfortable indeed, until I was soothed 

 by the minster-service yesterday." l 



But no amount of " minster-service " could cope with so strong a 

 natural bias, and many a bitter drop fell from the pen of Principal 

 Forbes into the lives of those whom he opposed subsequent to this 

 service at York. On hearing of the paper presented by Mr. Huxley 

 and myself to the Royal Society, he at once jumped to the conclusion 

 that the glaciers were to be made a " regular party question." " All 

 I can do," he says, " is to sit still till the indictment is made out ; and 

 I cordially wish my enemy to write a book and print it speedily, as 

 any thing is better than innuendo and suspense." 2 What he meant 

 by " indictment " I do not know ; and, with regard to " innuendo," 

 neither of the writers of the paper would be likely to resort to it in 

 preference to plain speaking. The words of a witty philosopher at 

 the time here referred to are significant : " Tyndall," he said, " is be- 

 ginning with ice, but he will end in hot water." He knew the circum- 

 stances, and was able to predict the course of events with the cer- 

 tainty of physical prevision. 



The quality referred to by his biographer, and the tendency arising 

 from it to look at things in a personal light, caused his intellect to run 

 rapidly into hypotheses of moral action which had no counterpart in 

 real life. I read with simple amazement his explanation to his friend 

 Mr. Wills of the postponement of the publication of the " Glaciers of 

 the Alps." Some of his supporters in the Council of the Royal So- 

 ciety had proposed him for the Copley Medal, but without success. 

 Had the rules of good taste been observed, he would have known 

 nothing of these discussions ; and, knowing them, he ought to have 

 ignored them. But he writes to his friend : " I believe the effect of 

 the struggle, though unsuccessful in its immediate object, will be to 

 render Tyndall and Huxley and their friends more cautious in their 

 further proceedings. For instance, Tyndall's book, again withdrawn 

 from Murray's ' immediate ' list, will probably be infinitely more care- 

 fully worded relative to Rendu than he first intended." 3 



I should be exceedingly sorry to apply to Principal Forbes the 

 noun-substantive which Byron, in " Childe Harold," applied to Rous- 

 seau, but the adjective " self-torturing " is, I fear, only too applicable. 

 His quick imagination suggested chimerical causes for events, but 

 1 Life, p. 165. 8 Ibid., p. 369. s Ibid., p. 387. 



