METEORIC ASTRONOMY. 105 



Had these impulsive gentlemen been previously subjected 

 to the strict discipline of inductive scientific training, their 

 position and opinions would have been very different. 

 Their great theories would either have had no existence, or 

 have been much smaller, and they would understand that 

 philosophic caution is one of the characteristic results of 

 scientific training. 



Simple facts, which can be immediately proved by simple 

 experiments and simple observations, are at once accepted, 

 and their discoverers duly honored, without any hesitation 

 or delay, but the grander efforts of generalization require 

 careful thought and laborious scrutiny for their verifica- 

 tion, and therefore the acknowledgment of their merits is 

 necessarily delayed; but when it does arrive full justice is 

 usually done. 



Thus Grove's " Correlation of the Physical Forces," the 

 greatest philosophical work on purely physical science of 

 this generation, was commenced in 1842, when its author 

 occupied but a humble position at the London Institution. 

 The book was but little noticed for many years, and, had 

 Mr. Grove (now Sir William Grove) not been duly educated 

 by the discipline above referred to, he might have become 

 a noisy cantankerous martyr, one of those "ill-used men" 

 who have been made familiar to so many audiences by Mr. 

 George Dawson. 



Instead of this, he patiently waited, and, as we have lately 

 seen, the well-deserved honors have now been liberally 

 awarded. 



In a very few years hence we shall be able to say the same 

 of the once diabolical Darwin, and eight or nine other theo- 

 rists, who must all be content to take their trial and 

 patiently await the verdict; the time of waiting being of 

 necessity proportionate to the magnitude of the issue. 



The theories of Schiaparelli, which, as Mr. Proctor says, 

 "after the usual term of doubt have so recently received 

 the sanction of the highest astronomical tribunal of Great 

 Britain," are not of so purely speculative a character as to 

 demand a very long "term of doubt." They are directly 

 based on observations and mathematical calculations which 

 bring them under the domain of the recognized logic of 



