16 



KNOWLEDGE • 



[Jan. 2, 1885. 





" Let Knowledge giow from more to more." — Alfbed Tenntsoh. 



(hily a small frcportion of Letters received can possibly he in- 

 serted. Correspondents mvst not le offended, there/ore, should tkeir 

 letters not appear. 



All Editorial conimnntcatio7is shoiild be addressed to the Editor o» 

 Knowledge; all Business conimvnicatimis to the Publisheks, at the 

 Office, 74, Oreat Queen-street, W.C. Ir this is not attended to 



DELAYS ARISE FOR WHICH THE EdITOB IS NOT RESPONSIBLE. 



All Semittances, Cheques, end Post Office Orders should le made 

 payable to Messrs. Wyman & Sons. 



The Editor is not responsible for the opinions of correspondents. 



No ccjumunk-'atioks abe an.'^'beeed ey fost, e"ven thocgb stamped 

 and directed envelope be enclosed. 



TO OBLIGE Jin. KIXXS. 



[1347] — 5Ir. Kinns, apparently nnaware that for tlie next few 

 months I shall be in America (whence, however, I continue to con- 

 ductExowLEiiGE in the fnllest sense of the words), writes to mo in 

 considerable dudgeon because of my remarks respecting his views 

 about " iloses and Geology," He wishes me, as I understand him, 

 to withdraw my remark tliat the gentleman who kindly acts for me 

 as editor in my absence, wrote " in good faith " what he said about 

 Mr. Kinns's work. This, I need hardly say, I decline to do. I 

 could not do it without gro.=s untruth, which"jlr. Kinns will excuse 

 me from being guilty of. The Acting Editor has, in the fullest and 

 clearest way, explained that a mistake, and a very remarkable one, 

 which disfigured the first edition of the book and led to his com- 

 ments, has disappeared from the second : and I have pointed out 

 that there is nothing libellous or injiu-ious in saying that a remark- 

 able mistake respecting any particular scientific subject implies 

 Ignorance on that subject at the time when the mistake was made. 

 I am grossly ignorant about a number of scientific subjects, and 

 expect, if (misunderstanding some statement by an expert) I make 

 incorrect remarks on such subjects, to find my ignorance pointed 

 out and corrected. So far from regarding such correction as in- 

 jurious, I recognise it as profitable. Mr.^Kinns, in like manner, 

 owes a debt of gratitude to whomsoever it was who first called 

 his attention to the mistake in his supposition that refraction might 

 bring a heavenly body into view round a whole hemispliere. This 

 enabled him to expunge the mistake from the new edition, and to 

 make quite a little noise over my friend's remarks based, in perfect 

 good faith, on the belief that "the error had not been removed. 

 Why, Mr. Kinns profited by a perfectly splendid opportunity of 

 advertising, for nothing, the increased value of the new edition of 

 his book. He assuredly has had, in the long-run, small reason to 

 complain, but quite altogether and .absolutely the other way about. 



Then Mr. Kmns wishes me to withdraw my remarks about a 

 certain monstrous miscalculation. Well, I decline to do that either. 

 I have the most perfect recollection of the mistake, which he was 

 good enough to send directly to me— and I am told it is relocated in 

 his book, in later as well as earlier editions. In fact, he himself 

 refers to it in his letters to me. The mistake was this. He 

 found fifteen statements in Genesis about successive creative 

 acts. He found that these could be shown to correspond with 

 !■« ''^ ^'a?PS recognised by various scientific men, writing in 

 different fields of research, as belonging to the past of the earth ; 

 and that these stages, according to the views of certain among 

 these scientific men, could be arranged in the same order as the 

 fifteen corresponding stages which he found in Genesis. Wherefore, 

 he reasoned in this marvellous way;— Fifteen things can bear- 

 ranged in 1,307,074,368,000 different ways ; the odds against a 

 particular arrangement being taken at random are therefore 

 1,307,674,307,999 to 1. Therefore these are the odds in favour 

 of Mr. Samuel Kinns's theory that the account given in 

 Genesis presented in abstract' the true sequence of events 

 m_ the early history of our earth. The real facts are some- 

 thing like this : — First, not a man of science living would 

 pretend to set in precise order any fifteen, or any ten, or any five 

 stages of the early history of our earth ; secondly the odds would 

 be millions to one against the correctness of any attempt on the 

 part of the whole scientific body of our day to mark out such a 

 sequence as Mr. Kinns has indicated; thirdly, of each of the 



fifteen Bible statements he uses, it may be said that it will bear 

 from five to twenty other interpretations than that assigned by 

 Mr. Kinn.o. Takii:g on the average the chance that he would be 

 able to fit three statements out of the fifteen with corresponding 

 scientific views as about 4-5 (which is equivalent to making the 

 chance in a single case rather better than 9-lOths), we find the 

 chance of his fitting all fifteen statements in this way, equal to 

 about 64,000 in 100,000, or the odds in favour of his doing so 

 nearly 2 to 1. (Noting Mr. Kinns's keenness in the work I would 

 certainly have backed him at long odds — 100 to 1, at least — to 

 manage it somehoic). This is the chance of Mr. Kinns showing 

 an apparent coincidence between the order of fifteen creative acts 

 recognised by him in Genesis, with fifteen stages (recognised by 

 some men of science) in the past history of the world, and by 

 some of them set — three or four stages at a time, or so — in a 

 certain order, out of which a suitable sequence of the fifteen (that 

 is, suitable for Mr. Kinns's theory) may be constructed. The odds 

 against any sequence thus constructed out of the very imperfect 

 data being right, or anywhere near right, must be millions to one. 

 Thus while the odds are strongly in favour of any one satisfying 

 himself with a solution, who seeks for it as Mr. Kinns has done, 

 the odds are overwhelmingly in favour of the solution so obtained 

 being incorrect. He may be regarded as in a sense resembling 

 Lady Tichborne, seeking for some one to represent her missing 

 son. She did this in such a way that she was almost sure to come 

 across a son in the long run, and that — if she did — she was quite 

 sure to come across the wrong one. 



Mr. Kinns further wishes me to withdraw my remark that his 

 view with regard to the general question is monstrous. But unfor- 

 tunately the more I think of it, the more monstrous it seems. In 

 effect, he expects us to believe that an inspired writer — it really is 

 a matter of perfect indifference whether Moses, or Samuel, or any 

 one else — wrote an account involving fifteen statements about the 

 past of the earth, in such a vague and unsatisfactory manner, that 

 till Mr. Kinns came along and was good enough to explain m,atters, 

 no one understood what the fifteen statements meant. Why this 

 is almost as monstrous as the belief of the pyramidal folk that an 

 Omniscient Being, with every conceivable way of communicating 

 his will open to him, chose to have the Great Pyramid bnilt at the 

 cost of thousands of innocent lives — cemented with blood, one 

 might say — in order that thousands of years after, when it had lost 

 all the fineness of structural detail which had once characterised 

 it, the pyramid should suggest to a few enthusiasts His plans and 

 purposes, with regard to the whole human race. 



EicnAED A. Proctor. 



DICKENS'S STORY LEFT HALF TOLD. 



[1548]— "J. B.'s" letter (1527, p. 471) about "Dickens's Story 

 Left Half Told" takes so very prosaic a view of the story, that it 

 seems hopeless to attempt to show that Dickens never could have 

 had such a dull plot in his mind. Still less would he have described 

 such a plot as " a powerful one," or again as " difficult to work out." 

 I will note a few of "J. B.'s" mistakes in matters of detail, but 1 

 have no expectation of convincing him. 



I do not make a great point of " the sight which solemnified 

 Jasper," &c. ; for I do not know what it was which, startled him so. 

 But I certainly reject "J. B.'s" prosaic interpretation. Possibly 

 some look or expression of countenance showing Drood's real 

 nature, earnest not frivolous, as Jasper and others fancied, may 

 h.ave been meant ; Dicken,s would have made a point of such a 

 detail as that. Neither do I pretend to say, or care to guess, how 

 Jasper's attack was carried out; all that belongs to the common- 

 place sensational part of the story, not to the real interest of the 

 plot. 



It would have been part of the difficulty of the plot to explain 

 how Drood had been so altered by the effects of the injuries he had 

 received as to be capable of carrying out his plan of keeping close 

 watch, in disguise, on one who knew Drood so well. If " Hunted 

 Down " had been left ui finished, similar objections might have 

 been raised against the true interpretation of that plot, too, — an 

 interpretation which every one who really understood Dickens's 

 wiiys guessed (in its general aspect, though not, of course, in 

 details) from the outset. So with Carton's plan for saving Darnay, 

 — we feel it, know even how it is to bo done, that is, on what 

 general idea the plan turns, yet one could not convince a common- 

 place reader that that was the plan, until or unless he had read on 

 to the end. The way in which, early in the story. Carton asks 

 Darnay if he does not think him unpleasant, satisfies every one 

 who understands Dickens that Carton is to make some great sacri- 

 fice for Darnay. 



*' J. B." thinks that the attention drawn to Datchcry would have 

 detected Drood had he been disguised in that character. Attention 

 would be drawn to Datchery's jieculiarities, and, therefore, not to. 



