10 COEKELATION OF PHYSICAL FOKCE8. 



and dangerous attempt at remodelling the public ideas, is 

 generally enunciated by the discoverers themselves of the 

 facts, or by those to whose authority the world at the period 

 of the discovery defers ; others are not bold enough, or if 

 they be so, are unheeded. The earliest theories thus enuncia 

 ted obtain the firmest hold upon the public mind, for at such 

 a time there is no power of testing, by a sufficient range of 

 experience, the truth of the theory ; it is accepted solely or 

 mainly upon authority : there being no means of contradic 

 tion, its reception is, in the first instance, attended with some 

 degree of doubt, but as the time in which it can fairly be in 

 vestigated far exceeds that of any lives then in being, and as 

 neither the individual nor the public mind will long tolerate 

 a state of abeyance, a theory shortly becomes, for want 

 of a better, admitted as an established truth : it is handed 

 from father to son, and gradually takes its place in edu 

 cation. Succeeding generations, whose minds are thus 

 formed to an established view, are much less likely to aban 

 don it. They have adopted it in the first instance, upon au 

 thority, to them unquestionable, and subsequently to yield up 

 their faith would involve a laborious remodelling of ideas, a 

 task which the public as a body will and can rarely under 

 take, the frequent occurrence of which is indeed inconsistent 

 with the very existence of man in a social state, as it would 

 induce an anarchy of thought a perpetuity of mental revo 

 lutions. 



This necessity has its good ; but the prejudicial effect 

 upon the advance of science is, that by this means, theories the 

 most immature frequently become the most permanent ; for 

 no theory can be more immature, none is likely to be so in 

 correct, as that which is formed at the first flush of a new 

 discovery ; and though time exalts the authority of those 

 from whom it emanated, time can never give to the illustri 

 ous dead the means of analysing and correcting erroneous 

 which subsequent discoveries confer. 



