8 



NATURE 



{JSIgv. I, 1877 



"Let us bury the hatchet ! Why should scientific men quarrel?" 

 I signified my full acceptance of the offered peace, and great was 

 my surprise soon afrer to find that, unmindful of the under- 

 stood compact, he had exhumed his hatchet and was dealing 

 me unexpected and wanton strokes, tempered by a certain 

 amount of half praise which reminds me of the sort of caressing 

 remonstrance of Majendie in the pre-ansesthetic days, to the dog 

 which he had on his operating table — " Taisez votis, pauvre 

 Mte!" 



In all seriousness, however, I must again ask, what is the 

 meaning of the "personal antagonism," and the persistent 

 attacks which Dr. Carpenter, for the last six years, has directed 

 against me ? In his recently published book, in the Nineteenth 

 Century, and in his last letter to you, the key-note struck in the 

 Quarterly Rtviezv six years ago is sustained. We have the 

 same personalities, the same somewhat stale remark about my 

 double nature, a>^d the same exuberance of that most dangerous 

 and misleading clnss of averments, half truths. Dr. Carpenter, 

 indeed, condescends to admit that I have pursued "with rare 

 ability and acuteness a delicate physical investigation in which 

 nothing is taken for granted without proof satisfactory to others 

 as well as to himself," and that I have "carried out a beautiful 

 inquiry in a manner and spirit worthy of all admiration ; " but, 

 after granting so much, he dissembles his love and proceeds to 

 "kick me down stairs." I am damned with faint praise, 

 and put to rights in such a school-masterly style, that I 

 could almost fancy Dr. Carpenter carries a birch rod concealed 

 in his coat-sleeve. He admits that in an humble and sub- 

 ordinate sphere I have done useful work, only I must not 

 give myself airs on that account. Dr. Carpenter reminds me of 

 Dr. Johnson defending Sir John Hawkins, when he was accused 

 of meanness. " I really believe him," said Johnson, " to be an 

 honest man at the bottom ; but to be sure he is penurious, and 

 he is mern, and it must be owned he has a degree of brutality, 

 and a tendency to savageness, that cannot easily be defended." 

 In the same magnanimous spirit Dr. Carpenter allows that I 

 have contributed a trifle to science, but he does not forget to 

 add that I am the victim of cerebral duplicity, and I am again 

 held up to illustrate the sad result of neglecting to train and 

 discipline "the whole mind during the period of its develop- 

 ment," &c. & ^ r 



I have, it appears, two allotropic personalities, which I may 

 designate, in chemical language, Ortho-Crookes and Pseudo- 

 Crookes. The Ortho-Grookes, according to Dr. Carpenter, has 

 acquired " deserved distinction as a chemist." He carries out a 

 " beautiful inquiry in a manner and spirit worthy of all admira- 

 tion." He has shown "ability, skill, perseverance, and freedom 

 from prepossession." He pursues " with rare ability and astute- 

 ness a delicate physical investigation." He evinces the "spirit 

 of the true philosopher," and he has "deservedly" received 

 "from the Royal Society the award of one of its chief dis- 

 tinctions." 



But Pseudo-Crookes, whose career Dr. Carpenter has evidently 

 watched almost from his cradle— as he professes to know the 

 details of his early education— unfortunately took a "thoroughly 

 unscientific course," and developed into a " specialist of 

 specialists." He had "very limited opportunities " and " never 

 had the privilege of associating" vrfth scientific men, al- 

 though he displayed " malics aitimus" "towards those with 

 whom he claims to be in fraternity." He is " totally desti- 

 tute of any knowledge of chemical philosophy, and utterly 

 untrustworthy as to any inquiry " not technical. His "asser- 

 tions " are " well known in the scientific world to be inconsistent 

 with fact." He enters on inquiries "with an avowed fore- 

 gone conclusion of his own." He has " lent himself to the 

 support of wicked frauds." He has "prepossessions upon 

 which clever cheats play." His "scientific tests" are not 

 "worthy of trust." He is a believer in "day dreams," and 

 the supporter of a "seething mass of folly and imposture;" 

 whi!st, to crown all, he actually thinks that the radiometer'is 

 driven "by the direct impetus of light." In short, this Pseudo- 

 Crookes is a compound of folly and knavery such as has rarely, if 

 ever, previously been encountered. 



William Crookes (The Ortho-Crookes ?) 

 London, October 29 



Mr. Wallace and Reichenbach's Odyle 

 I AM amazed that Dr. Carpenter should think it necessary to 

 make public, with such haste, Prof. Hoffmann's statement that 

 Baron Reichenbach's facts and theories are not accepted by the 



body of scientific men in Germany. Of course they are not. 

 But how this affects their intrinsic accuracy I fail to see. Less 

 than twenty years ago the scientific men of all Europe utterly 

 disbelieved in the co- existence of man with extinct animals ; yet 

 the facts adduced by Freere, Boue, McEnery, Godwin Austen, 

 Vivian, and Boucher de Perthes, are now admitted to have been 

 trustworthy and deserving of the most careful examuiation. The 

 whole history of scientific discovery from Galvani and Harvey 

 to Jenner and Franklin, teaches us, that every great advance in 

 science has been rejected by the scientific men of the period, with 

 an- amount of scepticism and bitterness directly proportioned to 

 the novelty and importance of the new ideas suggested and the 

 extent to which they run counter to received and cherished 

 theories. Rejection is one thing, disproof is another ; and I 

 have in vain searched for anything like disproof, or even rational 

 explanation, of Reichenbach's facts : his theory, or " Odyle- 

 doctrine," I have never "attempted to rehabilitate," as Dr. 

 Carpenter, with his usual misconception, says I have done. In 

 my review of Dr. Carpenter's lectures [Quarterly jFournal of 

 Science, July, 1877, P- 39^)) I adduce five tests employed by 

 Reichenbach, and also the independent and simultaneous con- 

 firmation of Dr. Charpignon in France ; and the only reply I 

 get is : "All men of science disbelieve them." With the facts 

 of history above alluded to in my mind, and believing that 

 human nature is very much the same in the nineteenth century 

 as it was in the eighteenth, I can only say, " so much the worse 

 for the men of science." 



Dr. Carpenter's reference to the believers in a flat earth, as a 

 parallel case, is unfortunate, because the two cases are really of 

 a totally different nature. Those who maintain the earth to be 

 flat do not deny the main facts which we rely on as proving it to 

 be round, but they attempt to give other explanations of them. 

 The dispute is on a question of reason and inference ; and every 

 intelligent and fairly educated man is able to decide it for him- 

 self. But in Reichenbach's case it is the facts that are rejected 

 without disproof or adequate explanation. The two cases are 

 therefore quite distinct, and Dr. Carpenter's attempted parallel, 

 as well as his setting up of scientific disbelief as a conclusive 

 reply to evidence, is in conformity with his whole treatment of 

 this subject. 



I trust that such of the readers of Nature as may feel any 

 interest in the questions at issue between Dr. Carpenter and 

 myself will read my article above referred to, and not allow 

 themselves to be influenced by Dr. C.'s repeated appeals to 

 authority and to prejudice. Alfred R. Wallace 



I HAVE to request your insertion of a post-card I have this 

 morning received, for two reasons ; frst, because, as it is ano- 

 nymous, and as the writer of it is obviously a reader of Nature, 

 no otherway is open to me for replying to it except that which your 

 columns may afford ; and secmidly, because it is a very curious' 

 example of the misconceptions into which men are apt to fall 

 who allow themselves to become " possessed " by " dominant- 

 ideas." 



" If Mr. A. R. Wallace has to choose between being either 

 'a fool or a knave,' there is at all events no choice left for the 

 man who deliberately and maliciously makes incorrect assertions 

 and suppresses the truth to further his own views. I dare say 

 you know what most people would call such a man. Yours, 

 " One who was at Plymouth " 



Now, in the first case, it must be perfectly obvious to any one 

 who is capable of reasoning logically, that nothing which I said of 

 Mr. Wallace in your last number can be twisted into the implication 

 that he is either " a fool or a knave." John Hampden is continu- 

 ally saying this of Mr. Wallace and of everybody who upholds the 

 rotundity of the earth. And I mildly suggested whether, in 

 putting himself in opposition to the whole aggregate of scientific 

 opinion on the value of Rf ichenbach's Odylism — not because he 

 had himself repeated them, but because he believes in Reichen- 

 bach — Mr. Wallace is not assuming an attitude in some degree 

 similar, that is, setting himself up as the one wise and honest 

 man who duly appreciates Reichenbach, and therefore implying 

 that everybody else is either stupidly or wilfully blind to 

 the evidence he presented. If anyone thinks it worth while 

 to read Mr. Wallace's review of my lectures on "Mes- 

 merism, Spiritualism," &c., in the last number of the Quarterly 

 Journal of Science, he will be able to judge whether I have or 

 have not wronged Mr. Wallace in this matter. 



The writer's appreciation of my own character, which has fre- 



