338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and sleight-of-hand performers of every grade, prefer examining com- 

 mittees composed of leading citizens the ablest jurists, physicians, 

 merchants, clergymen, scientists, and men of letters that can be found 

 and instinctively dread the criticism of children and of day-laborers, 

 who, being unable to read, or write, or to think, or to reason accord- 

 ing to the books, are obliged to trust their instincts. 



The world's greatest follies and darkest untruths, especialby while 

 in the process of dissolution, have always found some justly honored 

 authority in theology, in literature, in philosophy, in law, and in sci- 

 ence itself a Matthew Hale, a Lord Bacon, a Wesley, a Cotton Mather, 

 an Elliotson, a Hare, a Gregory, a Wallace, an Emerson, an Agassiz, a 

 Zollner, committees of learned academies, professors in great colleges 

 to stand by their bedside, armed with syllogisms, trusting their 

 senses, and conscientiously striving to nurse them back to vigorous life. 

 This grotesque phenomenon of history so universal as to command 

 general observation would seem to have this threefold explanation : 

 1. The fact here suggested, that clever natures trained in logic are 

 obliged to reason logically, and, as the logic of the world is wrong, they 

 arrive at the wrong conclusions, which, against the protestation of their 

 instincts, they are forced to accept. The greater the man the greater 

 his errors ; the weakness of the world confounds its strength ; igno- 

 rance is saved by its instincts, which science and logic dare not always 

 trust. If the chart be wrong, the navigator who accurately steers by it 

 is sure to go out of his course ; while he who goes by blind reckoning 

 may possibly float into harbor. 2. The social and professional posi- 

 tion of men of genius and ability is constantly compelling them to 

 undertake investigations in departments in which they are not authori- 

 ties, and requires them to proclaim positive decisions which, like the 

 results of all non-expert investigations, are almost inevitably erroneous. 

 3. The faculty of wonder that so often leads to credulity is not incon- 

 sistent with the highest scientific genius ; it is, indeed, a powerful and 

 determining element in the scientific character, and thus what has been 

 called " the foundation of all philosophy " also becomes the foundation 

 of all folly. Such, as it would appear, is the solution of the problem 

 which for so many years has been the despair of the historian and the 

 opprobrium of psychology. 



Hence it is that there are no superstitions that are so superstitious 

 as the superstitions of scientific men. Hence it is that all delusions in 

 their decline cast their last shadows over the loftiest heights of science, 

 of literature, and philosophy. 



