1<) CORRELATION OF PHYSICAL FORCES. 



and dangerous attempt at remodelling the public ideas, is 

 gem-rally enunciated by the discoverers themselves of the, 

 facts, or by those to whose authority the world at the period 

 of the discovery defers ; others are not bold enough, or if 

 they be so. are unheeded. The earliest theories thus enuncia- 

 ted obtain the firmest hold upon the public mind, for at 

 a time there is no power of testing, by a sufficient ran. 

 experience, the truth of the theory; it is aeeepted so! 

 mainly upon authority: there being no means of contradic- 

 tion, its reception is. in the tir>t i ittended with some 

 6 of doubt, but as the time in which irly be in- 

 atcd far exceed- that of any lives then in he : 

 neither the individual nor the public mind will long tolerate 

 a State of abeyance, a theory shortly beOO want 

 of a better, admitted as an established truth : it i- handed 

 from father to son, and gradually takes its place in edii- 

 :. Succeed! . whose minds are thus 

 forme. 1 to : ^lied view, are much less likely to aban- 

 don it. They have adopted it in the tirst instance, upon au- 

 thority, to them unquestionable, and subsequently to yield up 

 their faith would involve a laborious n modelling of id. 

 ta.-k which the public as a body will and can rarely under- 

 take, the frequent of which is indeed i;, 

 with the . of man in a -ocial >t. would 

 indii'-e an anarchy of thought a perpeti: utal revo- 

 lutions. 



This necessity has its good ; but the prejudicial eifcct 

 upon the advance of science is, that by this means, theories the 

 most immature frequently become the most permanent ; for 

 no theory can be more immature, none is likely to be so in- 

 correct, as that which is formed at the first flush of a new 

 discovery; and though time exalts the authority of those 

 from whom it emanated, time can never give to the illustri- 

 ous dead the means of analysing and correcting erroneous 

 views which subsequent discoveries confer. 



