228 



KNOWLEDGE 



[May 1, 1886. 



But, to say tbe truth, I am not concerned to deny tliat 

 I take and need a good deal of room in Knowledge. The 

 number of those who are ready to work on the lines I have 

 adopted is not great. Too many of our students of science 

 .•ire unable, apparently, to escape the idea that there is a 

 loss of dignity in using plain untechnical wor<]s. I cannot 

 get from sucli men the kind of writing I want. On the 

 other hand, many students of science who are willing enough 

 to write plainly are either not sufficiently acquainted with 

 scientific subjects or mistake the childlike and bland for the 

 simple and clear. They are ready to fill column after 

 column with trivialities and inexact platitudes, under the 

 idea that they are writing about science. Our way is 

 strait, and there are at present very few who walk in it. 

 Many profound thinkers there are, and many writers who 

 possess an excellent style, but the true thinkers who will, 

 and can, write clearly are not manr. 



* * * 



TuE Topical Times says, rather neatly, that I ought to 

 take for a motto for Knowledge " Le iSavoir ; c'est inoi." 

 Neat, not goady ; for there is some truth in the suggestion 

 that Knowledge depends a good deal on me. It was my 

 idea to start a paper in which scientific discoveries (not mine) 

 should be brought before those who are not specialists in 

 science. Our monthly magazines had and have ( I hope they 

 will long have) articles such as I want to see in Knowledge. 

 But they depend for their circulation on novels and stories, 

 politics and poetry. The articles which make the substance 

 of Knowledge make the padding of the monthly magazines. 

 It may perhaps suggest itself, even to a che;ip critic (in this 

 sense "that he has to review a magazine in perhaps half a 

 dozen lines, and therefore for but a moderate sum), that in 

 such a venture there was, and is, some degree of risk. We 

 cannot have the support of novel-readers as the monthlies 

 have, of scientific specialists with XaHire, of general litera- 

 ture students with the AcaJemi/ and AlheiKrum, or of me- 

 chanics with Iron and the English Mechanic. We may get 

 readers from all those classes, but certainly we cannot expect 

 the support of those classes as such. This being so, perhaps 

 the Topical Times may find less to wonder at in the circum- 

 stance that I, who started the idea and ran all the risks, 

 should also do a large proportion of the work. This, thought 

 over a little, may be found to imply neither the self-suffi- 

 ciency nor the want of generosity which the Tojncal Times 

 would apparently attribute to me. If the Topical Times 

 knows of anyone ready to start a magazine, supplying the 

 same special kind, quality, and amount of material as is 

 given monthly in Knowledge, and at the same price, I shall 

 be very glad to hear of it. But as matters actually stand, 

 I know that I have no occasion to defend or excuse aught 

 in the conduct of this paper, but rather, were the truth only 

 known, very much the other way. Hitherto, if I have 

 supplied, as I think, a want, I have done so at a pretty 

 heavy price. I have had to work elsewhere than in Know- 

 ledge to meet it. 



* * * 



As readers of Knowledge know, I have nothing of what 

 is commonly miscalled loyalty. I simply do not understand 

 it, at least as a feeling to be entertained by grown men ; as 

 a child, and even for several years after childhood, I knew it 

 well enough ; and for this reason I assign the feeling to 

 that early stage in the development of onr races, of which 

 the feelings of childhood or of boyhood bear witness. In- 

 deed, we need only consider the requirements of savage 

 races to see that personal " loyalty " is a useful and desirable 

 race quality. Devotion to a chief (even though he may be 

 of the piratical type, like Eollo the Norman or Kerdic the 

 Saxon, from w-hom the royal family of England derives its 



title) was of old devotion to race, nay, even to family. It was 

 essentially a duty in savage times to be ready to fight to the 

 death for chief and ruler, even though instead of faith and 

 fatherland that meant fighting for plunder and other folks' 

 land. Now, matters have to some degree altered. Even if 

 science would permit ns to believe that the present inheritors 

 of royal title inherited a trace of the fighting qualities of 

 the old pirate chieftains, we now no longer recognise these 

 qualities as in any way valuable or even respectable. Loy- 

 alty to one's fellow-men no longer includes special loyalty to 

 a family or a person, — nay, the word •' loyalty " so applied 

 is absurd to those who see things as they really are. 



* * * 



But while I thus rather despise personal loyalty in all but 

 the young or uncultured, I must confess to a strong feeling 

 of indignation at the gross rudeness shown by many to the 

 members of the royal family. When I read that pijrfectly 

 inoffensive, nay, probably most excellent and amiable ladies, 

 are so pursued and intruded upon by boorish and unmannerly 

 persons, that they are prevented from taking their walks 

 abroad as other people do, I wonder that some measures 

 have not besn taken to remedy so gross a wrong. I suppose 

 the trouble is that women share in the offence. The summary 

 measures which would be appropriate for boors of the mascu- 

 line persuasion could hardly be ajiplied to the females of 

 the race. 



* *• * 



In another way, another lady of the royal Aimily of 

 England, in fact the head of the family, has recently been 

 rather rudely treated. One can hardly view otherwise, I 

 think, tbe comments made on two kindly letters written by 

 her recently to another lady who has recently known sorrow. 

 Tbe publication of the letters, having had the queen's 

 sanction, was doubtless permissible, though one rather 

 wonders at it. But the comments made in many journals 

 on the circumstance that such letters were written, were 

 surelj' offensive to .a degree. They may not have been so 

 intended. As Philip Firinin says, there are .some peojsle 

 who are oflensivo without meaning to be. But what could 

 be more offensive than a tone implying absolute ivonder that 

 the queen should be a kindly woman, touched by sorrows 

 akin to those which she has her-self known in the past 1 



■* * * 

 I AM glad to be bringing to a close the hardest lecturing 

 season I have ever undertaken — or rather which has ever 

 been arranged for me.' Giving carte blanche to an agent to 

 manage such lectures as could be managed, I have found 

 considerably more lectures and travelling than I could well 

 manage ari-anged for me. But I have now nearly got 

 through the work (shall have quite got through it by the 

 time these lines appear) and yet I remain alive ! In fact at 

 the beginning of the set of nearly 200 lectures, in last 

 August, I was very ill, and now — thanks — I am as well as 

 I ever remember to have been in my life. 



* * * 



Odd experiences come to the lecturer who lectures often 

 enough. The other day in Ireland, after giving a carefully 

 reasoned lecture (as I thought), only simple in being dive.sted 

 of technicalities, mv chairman (or rather the chairman invited 

 to preside by the committee, for / never want chairmen) 

 asked me, " Er — do you know really much about astronomy 1 " 

 and on my replying, with characteristic modesty, that were I 

 to say I knew much I should show I knew little, tbe worthy 

 ofiicer (for he was a military man) proceeded, " Er — because 

 — er — I always thought you wanted ' algebrab ' for astro- 

 nomy ? " to which I did not reply that one also needed the 

 alphabet in literature. 



