x.] SCIENCE OPEN TO ALL. 247 



unsound. It is this struggle with all sorts of super- 

 stitions which makes science strong and sure, and her 

 march irresistible, winning ground slowly, but never 

 receding from it. It is this buffeting of adversity 

 which compels her not to rest dangerously upon the 

 shallow sand of first guesses, and single observations ; 

 but to strike her roots down, deep, wide, and interlaced, 

 into the solid ground of actual facts. 



It is very necessary to insist on this point. For 

 there have been men in all past ages I do not say 

 whether there are any such now, but I am inclined to 

 think that there will be hereafter men who have tried 

 to represent scientific method as something difficult, 

 mysterious, peculiar, unique, not to be attained by the 

 unscientific mass ; and this not for the purpose of 

 exalting science, but rather of discrediting her. For 

 as long as the masses, educated or uneducated, are 

 ignorant of what scientific method is, they will look on 

 scientific men, as the middle age looked on necro- 

 mancers, as a privileged, but awful and uncanny caste, 

 possessed of mighty secrets ; who may do them great 

 good, but may also do them great harm. Which 

 belief on the part of the masses will enable these 

 persons to instal themselves as the critics of science, 

 though not scientific men themselves : and as 

 Shakespeare has it to talk of Kobin Hood, though 

 they never shot in his bow. Thus they become 

 mediators to the masses between the scientific and the 

 unscientific worlds. They tell them You are not to 

 trust the conclusions of men of science at first hand. 

 You are not fit judges of their facts or of their methods. 

 It is we who will, by a cautious eclecticism, choose out 

 for you such of their conclusions as are safe for you ; 



