258 THE PRIDE OF IGXORANCE. 



and crucial experiment that his skill and his inge- 

 nuity can in any way suggest to him. They are 

 not aware that the moment his conclusions are 

 made public they are subjected to a close and 

 5Jigcr scrutiny by a hundred other scientific men, 

 clfted, t(?sted, pulled about, dissected, if possible 

 assailed, denied, and refuted. Men of science are 

 always trying one another's supposed discoveries 

 or inventions with the utmost keenness, frank- 

 ness, and critical acuteness. They are not re- 

 strained by considerations of polite reticence ; if 

 they believe an experiment to be inconclusive, 

 or an inference to be false, they say so not 

 only pLainl}', but bluntly and pointedly. They 

 sit as a perpetual court of appeal to hear cases 

 sent up to them for trial from the individual 

 discoverers. Whatever belief escapes their care- 

 ful and close examination, whatever idea is 

 stamped by their universal and cordial appro- 

 bation, may safely be acce[)ted by the rest 

 of the world as fairly irrefutable. Men who 

 know anything at all know, for example, that the 

 earth's rotundity has been abundantly proved 

 over and over again by endless experiments and 

 observations, and still more by the successful car- 

 rying-out of innumerable schemes or calculations 

 based upon its known size and shape and degree 

 of oblateness. Every ship that makes its way 

 from one port to another by daily taking the lati- 



