486 On Mental Education. [1855. 



the latter are called upon, and occasionally taunted, by the 

 former. A man who makes assertions, or draws conclusions, 

 regarding any given case, ought to be competent to investigate 

 it. He has no right to throw the onus on others, declaring it 

 their duty to prove him right or wrong. His duty is to demon- 

 strate the truth of that which he asserts, or to cease from as- 

 serting. The men he calls upon to consider and judge have 

 enough to do with themselves, in the examination, correction, 

 or verification of their own views. The world little knows how 

 many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through 

 the mind of a scientific investigator have been crushed in silence 

 and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examina- 

 tion ; that in the most successful instances not a tenth of the 

 suggestions, the hopes, the wishes, the preliminary conclusions 

 have been realized. And is a man so occupied to be taken from 

 his search after truth in the path he hopes may lead to its 

 attainment, and occupied in vain upon nothing but a broad 

 assertion ? 



Neither has the assertor of any thing new a right to claim an 

 answer in the form of Yes or No ; or think, because none is forth- 

 coming, that he is to be considered as having established his 

 assertion. So much is unknown to the wisest man, that he may 

 often be without an answer : as frequently he is so, because 

 the subject is in the region of hypothesis, and not of facts. In 

 either case he has the right to refuse to speak. I cannot tell 

 whether there are two ^fluids of electricity or any fluid at all. 

 I am not bound to explain how a table tilts any more than to 

 indicate how, under the conjurer's hands, a pudding appears 

 in a hat. The means are not known to me. I am persuaded 

 that the results, however strange they may appear, are in ac- 

 cordance with that which is truly known, and if carefully in- 

 vestigated would justify the well-tried laws of nature ; but, as 

 life is limited, 1 am not disposed to occupy the time it is made 

 of, in the investigation of matters which, in what is known to me 

 of them, offer no reasonable prospect of any useful progress, 

 or anything but negative results. We deny the right of those 

 who call upon us to answer their speculations ' if we can,' whilst 

 we have so many of our own to develope and correct ; and claim 

 the right for ourselves of withholding either our conclusions or 

 the reasons for them, without in the least degree admitting that 



