72 the President's address. 



possible ways, then we may be clinging to fallacies by which we 

 deceive ourselves, and, in the end, blame the instrument for our 

 own exaggerations. 



If we do not take into account the many ways in which we are 

 liable to err, through a disregard of recent discoveries, especially 

 in the direction of defective vision, we shall be in constant danger 

 of repeating and perpetuating exploded errors, and originating new 

 ones, which are in themselves neither more nor less than practical 

 exaggerations of our own ignorance. 



In fine, in proportion as we magnify objects are we in danger 

 of magnifying false impressions, unless we give some little attention 

 to those very " brass and glass " questions which some of us affect 

 to despise. 



Having satisfied yourself, from its manifestations, such as I have 

 indicated, that any given subject has passed from the calm region 

 of judicial enquiry, into the excited arena of public disquisition, is 

 being exalted into an article of orthodox faith, in which " whoever 

 believeth shall be saved, and whoever doubteth is damned," rely 

 upon it, that no other course is left to you but to exercise to the 

 fullest extent your privilege of independent judgment, and to 

 insist that it shall be stripped bare of all exaggerations, of all 

 external sophistry, that is gathered about it in order to conceal its 

 barrenness, and confound its true issues. Coolly, without prejudice, 

 to examine all the alleged facts thoroughly and exhaustively, com- 

 paring these with your own experiences, and the acknowledged data 

 which the experience of others has determined. All the cobwebs 

 of supposition, and probability, and assumption without authority, 

 must be swept away ; and upon authenticated legitimate fact, and 

 upon the hard facts alone, must your judgment be based. The 

 very circumstance of exaggeration entering into the advocacy of 

 any hypothesis is sufficient to invest it with suspicion. Dogmatic 

 assumption and persistent self-assertion is no less suggestive of an 

 unsound basis. More than all, the incessant appeal "to the 

 stump," to popular prejudice, and the " intelligent public " to 

 determine a question which depends upon the exercise of well-dis- 

 ciplined observation, and the calm judgment of experienced investi- 

 gators, is akin to an appeal on points of law, from the assembled 

 Judges in the High Court of Justice, to the old fishwomen of 

 Billingsgate. It is simply impossible to place reliance upon such 

 an appeal. The translation of scientific terminology into the vulgar 



