MEN OF SCIENCE AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC. 23 



Let our first inquiry be, then, in what particular does he fail in 

 the full discharge of his duties as a man of science and especially 

 as an exponent of science among his fellows ? 



Without attempting to arrange the answers which suggest 

 themselves in logical order, or, indeed, to select those of the first 

 importance, I submit, to begin with, his inability or unwillingness, 

 common but by no means universal, to present the results of his 

 labors in a form intelligible to intelligent people. When inability, 

 it is a misfortune, often the outgrowth, however, of negligence or 

 indifference ; when unwillingness, it becomes at least an offense, 

 and one not indicative of the true scientific spirit. Unfortunately ? 

 we are not yet entirely out of the shadow of the middle ages, when 

 learning was a mystery to all except a select few, or of the centu- 

 ries a little later, when a scientific treatise must be entombed in a 

 dead language or a scientific discovery embalmed in a cipher. 



Many scientific men of excellent reputation are to-day guilty of 

 the crime of unnecessary and often premeditated and deliberately 

 planned mystification ; in fact, almost by common consent this 

 fault is overlooked in men of distinguished ability, if, indeed, it 

 does not add a luster to the brilliancy of their attainments. It is 

 usually regarded as a high compliment to say of A that, when he 

 read his paper in the Mathematical Section, no one present was 

 able to understand what it was about ; or of B and his book that 

 there are only three men in the world who can read it. We 

 greatly, though silently, admire A and B, while C, the unknown, 

 who has not yet won a reputation, and who ventures to discuss 

 something which we do understand (after his clear and logical 

 presentation of the subject), must go content with the patronizing 

 admonition that there is really nothing new about this, and that 

 if he will consult the pages of a certain journal of a few years ago, 

 he will find the same idea, not developed, it is true, but hinted at 

 and put aside for future consideration, or that he will find that 

 Newton or Darwin declared what is essentially the same principle 

 many years before. No one can deny that there are great reason 

 and good judgment displayed in all this, but the ordinary layman 

 is likely to inquire whether it is distributed and apportioned with 

 nice discrimination ; and it is the standpoint of the layman which 

 we are occupying at the present moment. 



All will admit that there are many men whose power in origi- 

 nal thinking and profound research is far greater than their fa- 

 cility of expression, just as, on the other hand, there are many 

 more men whose linguistic fluency is unembarrassed by intellect- 

 ual activity, and representatives of both classes may be found 

 among those usually counted as men of science. It is with the 

 first only that we are concerned at the present moment, and it is 

 sufficient to remark that their fault is relatively unimportant and 



