INTRODUCTION 17 



silence, not in debate ; in supercilious aloofness, and not 

 in democratic fellowship ; in the assumption of a pontif- 

 ical authority that spurns alike question and questioner, 

 and leaves the matter where it started. This is scarcely 

 the place for private confidences, and so I forbear to cite 

 specific instances in support of the testimony of hundreds 

 more of the subtle influences at work to stifle candid 

 criticism and muzzle the scientific skeptic. Of course, it is 

 not to be expected that avowals of this policy of suppres- 

 sion, or by what underhand means it is designed to be 

 made effective, should be published broadcast ; yet that it 

 is not a mere creation of a heated imagination but a sub- 

 stantial fact to be reckoned with, sufficiently appears be- 

 tween the lines of the following passage from the pen of 

 Doctor Charles Gr. Abbot, the eminent Director of the 

 Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Washington. 

 In his magnum opus (The Sun, p. 8) he says : 



Every large scientific institution or observatory has almost 

 daily communications from persons of very moderate attainments 

 who presume to question, nay rather to spurn, the most well-at- 

 tested facts of human knowledge. Such persons seem to prefer 

 especially to direct their attacks on the following facts: the 

 Copernican system ; the law of universal gravitation ; the first and 

 second laws of energy ; and, finally, the high temperature of the 

 sun. No argument can refute them, because they have not the 

 requisite learning to comprehend it, which is no disgrace, but 

 which should make men modest enough to have faith in those who 

 excel them immeasurably. Hence it is the policy of most scien- 

 tific institutions to avoid entirely discussions of these subjects 

 with such correspondents. 



Professor Newcomb tells, in his Reminiscences of an As- 

 tronomer, of such a critic who called upon him and announced his 

 disbelief in Sir Isaac Newton's theory of gravitation. Professor 

 Newcomb proposed to the skeptic that he jump out of the window 

 and convince himself of the existence of gravitation. Being thus 

 pressed, the visitor stated that he believed that gravitation ex- 

 tended no further than the air, and did not go up to the moon. 

 Professor Newcomb asked him if he had ever been there to see, 

 and when his caller answered 'No', replied that, until one of them 

 could go to the moon and try the experiment, he doubted if they 

 could ever agree ! 



