254 SCIENCE IN SHOET CHAPTERS. 



The title of the article is " Spiritualism and its Recent Converts," 

 and the " recent converts" most specially and prominently named 

 are Mr. Crookes and Dr. Huggins. Sergeant Cox is also named, but 

 not as a recent convert ; for the reviewer describes him as an old and 

 hopelessly infatuated Spiritualist. Knowing nothing of Sergeant 

 Cox, I am unable to say whether the reviewer's very strong personal 

 statements respecting him are true or false whether he really ift 

 "one of the most gullible of the gullible," etc., though I must pro- 

 test against the bad taste which is displayed in the attack which is 

 made upon this gentleman. The head and front of his offending 

 cons sts in having certified to the accuracy of certain experiments ; 

 and for having simply done this, the reviewer proceeds, in accord- 

 ance with the lowest tactics of Old Bailey advocacy, to bully the wit- 

 ness, and to publish disparaging personal details of what he did 

 twenty-five years ago. 



Dr. Huggins, who has had nothing further to do with the subject 

 than simply to state that he witnessed what Mr. Crookes described, 

 and who has not ventured upon one word of explanation of the phe- 

 nomena, is similarly treated. 



The reviewer goes out of his way to inform the public that Dr. 

 Huggins is, after all, only a brewer, by artfully stating that, " like 

 Mr. Whitbread, Mr. Lassell, and other brewers we could name, Dr. 

 Huggins attached himself in the first place to the study of astron- 

 omy." He then proceeds to sneer at " such scientific amateurs," by 

 informing the public that they " labor, as a rule, under a grave dis- 

 advantage, in the want of that broad basis of scientific culture which 

 alone can keep them from the narrowing and pervertive influence of 

 a limited specialism." 



The reviewer proceeds to say that he has " no reason to believe 

 that Dr. Huggins constitutes an exception" to this rule, and further 

 asserts that he is justified in concluding that Dr. Huggins is ignorant 

 of " every other department of scrence than the small subdivision of a 

 branch to which he has so meritoriously devoted himself. " Mark the 

 words, " small subdivision of a branch." Merely a twig of the tree 

 of science is, according to this most unveracicus writer, all that Dr. 

 Huggins has ever studied. 



If a personal vindication were the business of this letter I could 

 easily show that these statements respecting the avocations, the sci- 

 entific training, and actual attainments of Dr. Huggins are gross and 

 atrocious misrepresentations ; but Dr. Huggins has no need of my 

 championship ; his high scientific position, the breadth and depth 

 of his general attainments, and the fact that he is not Huggins the 

 brewer, are sufficiently known to all in the scientific world, with the 

 exception of the Quarterly reviewer. 



My object is not to cliscuss the personal question whether book- 

 making and dredging afford better or worse training for experimental 

 inquiry than the marvellously exact and exquisitely delicate manipu- 

 lations of the modern observatory and laboratory, but to protest 

 against this attempt to stop the progress of investigation, to damage 

 the true interests of science and the cause of truth, by throwing low 

 libellous mud upon any and everybody who steps at all aside from 

 the beaten paths of ordinary investigation. 



The true business of science is the discovery of truth ; to seek it 

 wherever it may be found, to pursue it through byways as well as 



