1887 REPRESENTATIVE SCIENTISTS 19 



but strictly scientific reasoning can take us no further. 

 Where we know nothing we can neither affirm nor deny 

 with propriety. 



The other is in answer to the Bishop of Ripon, 

 enclosing a few lines on the principal representatives 

 of modern science, which he had asked for. 



4 Marlborough Place, 

 Ju7ie 16, 1887. 



My dear Bishop of Ripon — I shall be very glad ii 

 I can be of any use to you now and always. But it is 

 not an easy task to put into haK-a-dozen sentences, up to 

 the level of your vigorous English, a statement that shall 

 be unassailable from the point of view of a scientific 

 fault-finder — which shall be intelligible to the general 

 public and yet accurate. 



I have made several attempts and enclose the final 

 residt. I think the substance is all right, and though 

 the form might certainly be improved, I leave that to 

 you. When I get to a certain point of tinkering my 

 phrases I have to put them aside for a day or two. 



Will you allow me to suggest that it might be better 

 not to name any living man ? The temple of modern 

 science has been the work of many labourers not only in 

 our own but in other countries. Some have been more 

 busy in shaping and laying the stones, some in keeping 

 off the Sanballats, some prophetwise in indicating the 

 course of the science of the future. It would be hard to 

 say who has done best service. As regards Dr. Joule, for 

 example, no doubt he did more than any one to give the 

 doctrine of the conservation of energy precise expression, 

 but Mayer and others run him hard. 



Of deceased Englishmen who belong to the first half 

 of the Victorian epoch, I should say that Faraday, Lyell, 

 and Darwin had exerted the greatest influence, and all 



