658 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



mined and as clearly expressed as that of an astronomical observer; and to have 

 all the helps and hindrances to his work, tending to modify his results, estimated 

 with the same vigorous discrimination. Except, perhaps, in the line of mathe- 

 matics, we have no means of doing this, because we have no fixed standard of com- 

 parison as in the heavenly bodies and in the direct proofs possible to mathemat- 

 ical reasoning. In other lines, the nearest to accuracy we can reach is in the 

 careful balancing of probabilities. In this, too, the personal liabilities to error 

 are involved, and thus the conclusions of erring men, even with equal honesty 

 and candor, are necessarily subject to infinite variation. 



Another difficulty in arriving at truth, growing out of our necessary depend- 

 ence for data upon the researches and statements of others, is in the liability to 

 miscomprehend the facts as stated. If an author's statements are written, by the 

 simple oversight of a comma his words may convey a widely different meaning 

 from that he intended. The mistake of a little girl who protested that there 

 would be plenty of preserves to eat in heaven, because the catechism says, " He 

 makes, preserves, and keeps them;" and the pessimist's quotation, "There is a 

 divinity that shapes our ends rough, hew them how we will ; " are not without a 

 parallel in many a more profound research. When statements are taken from 

 oral delivery, it is easy to fall into an error like that of the little girl who, on 

 returning from Sunday School, asked her mother what kind of a bear a conse- 

 crated cross-eyed bear was. She had heard them sing, "The Consecrated Cross 

 I'll Bear." Another, who had heard repeated the golden text: "Behold! a 

 greater than Solomon is here," said on returning home that the text was, " Hold 

 a grater to Solomon's ear." Men are often charged with statements which are 

 equally foreign to their real sentiments. This may be due to no lack of honesty 

 but to lack of good hearing or of discrimination. 



In too many other cases, however, it is nothing but sheer dishonesty. Even 

 men in high positions are not infrequently detected in garbling quotations from more 

 original authorities, coloring their extracts to favor their own views and positions, 

 when the real meaning of the author quoted is entirely different. Lorenzo Dow's 

 text from the Bible, "Top-not come down," (Matt. 24, 17), for a sermon against 

 the coal-hod bonnets of his day; the wag's rendition of Scripture, "The wicked 

 flea, when no man pursueth but the righteous, is as bold as a lion," are not a 

 whit further from the truth intended than many of these mutilated quotations. 



It is not particularly assuring to one who wishes to keep a general run of 

 the best thought and work of the age, and must take it largely at second-hand, 

 to be engulfed in such a chaos of deception and contradiction as the following, 

 which is not an imaginary case : One reads an article by a not unknown writer, 

 setting forth views pleasing to the reader and such as he. would gladly accept. 

 He notes them as of peculiar interest. Coming to " editorial notes " in the same 

 issue, he finds expressions of doubt as to their correctness. In a latter issue the 

 reader is reassured by a rejoinder in which the criticised author maintains his 

 position "' without fear of successful contradiction " by a long array of instances, 

 and fortifies it with copious quotations from the writings of known and trusted 



