! 1 8 CRA VING FOR NO VEL TY. 



reasonable, and have been accepted readily, and diffused 

 widely, as if they had been proved to be truth itself, cannot 

 possibly be formed by any one who is not able to consider 

 details and estimate the correctness of numerous elementary 

 points of no interest whatever to a general reader, and very 

 likely to be passed over by him, or discarded as tiresome, 

 unprofitable, and useless. It is the objection or refusal 

 upon the part of those interested in these questions to 

 consider carefully the merits of the facts adduced in their 

 support, that has led to the acceptance of many utterly 

 untenable doctrines. Instead of a widely diffused desire 

 that scientific facts and arguments should be carefully 

 examined, and experiments and observations repeated, one 

 observes a strange craving after mere scientific novelty, a 

 demand for wide generalizations without much anxiety con- 

 cerning their truth, or the accuracy of the facts upon which 

 they are based ; nay, in some instances, there is a manifest 

 desire, on the part of the disciple, to be assured by authority 

 that conclusions which tend in one particular direction must 

 be indubitably true. These and some other circumstances 

 have tended to prevent the mere pretentiousness and vague 

 superficial character of many of the unsound and ill-advised 

 scientific statements which have been made and repeated 

 with great force during the last few years from being freely 

 criticised, and the fallacies comprised in them properly com- 

 mented upon and fully explained. It is unfortunate that 

 the true state of the case cannot be easily rendered evident 

 without a very careful study and full analysis of the state- 

 ments that have been made, more especially as many 

 persons of good sense, but having perhaps little technical 

 knowledge, suspect them and doubt them, and with good 



