200 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



naturalists. But it was not these, their first and therefore most enjoy- 

 able discoveries, that made them what they afterward became, nor had 

 they at the outset even the right to an opinion on the value of their 

 finds. Years of strenuous and unrenowned exertion had to follow, in 

 which they jjublished little or nothing new, but gathered up the old, 

 and rediscovered, by experiment and observation, what the records of 

 the past preserved. 



What I deprecate is the claim to special attention made by inex- 

 perienced stumblers on forgotten or unnoticed facts, remarkable or 

 otherwise, on the sole ground of the discovery. I deprecate the folly 

 of the youth who, because he has found a spear, leaps into the empty 

 chariot of Achilles, and, calling on the Grecian host to follow him, 

 lashes the horses for an immediate attack on Troy ; nor finds it out 

 until he is half-way aci'oss the plain, that he rides alone, and to de- 

 struction. I feel no admiration, no respect, for the audacity with 

 which our young recruits of science rush unpanoplied into the thick 

 of a discussion involving the greatest thinking of the age. They act 

 like animals at a conflagration. I hear on all sides a noisy tumult of 

 untrained intellects. Shall such themes as the nebular hypothesis, 

 the probable solidity or fluidity of our planet, the metamorphosis of 

 rocks, the origin of serpentine or petroleum, the cause of foliation, 

 the stable or unstable geographical relationships of continent to ocean, 

 the probable rate of geological time, the conditions of climate in the 

 ages of maximum ice, the probable centers of life-dispersion, the unity 

 or multiplicity of the human race, the evolution of species, be babbled 

 over by men, the amount of whose efiicient work in any branch of 

 science is measurable with a foot-rule ; while those whose entire lives 

 have been but one exhausting struggle with the shapes which people 

 the darkness of science speak with bated breath and downcast eyes 

 of these great mysteries ? 



There is a shibboleth by which tyros in science can always be de- 

 tected — their habitual employment of the words " doubtless," " cer- 

 tainly," and " demonstrated." To their inexperience of the univer- 

 sality of error, every new statement in print over a name noted in 

 science reads like a revelation of the absolute ; and every conclusion 

 at which they themselves arrive, after a more or less superficial study 

 of the limited number of facts which accident has given them the 

 opportunity to observe, seems a conclusion too real to be impugned. 

 I love the remembrance of my youth, but I regret its dogmatic im- 

 pertinences. Young votaries of science draw their inspiration from 

 the maxim which best suits them — " Try the value of old truths by 

 new discoveries." The veterans of science reverse the rule, and test 

 all new discoveries by a world of half-forgotten facts and well-estab- 

 lished principles. The advancement of science is accomplished by the 

 push and pull of these two ruling motives. No science were possi- 

 ble if the aged could suppress the youthful, or the youthful could ex- 



