August 28, 1885.] 



SCIENCE, 



173 



variable star before any telescope had noticed it, or 

 finding some Hadrosaurus bones in a New Jersey 

 marl pit, or a Paradoxides at the Quincy quarries ? 

 Such accidents have all the importance of trumpet- 

 notes sounding to boots and saddle. But, after all, 

 the trumpeter is only a trumpetei-, although he may 

 imagine himself the colonel of the regiment, or a 

 general in the army. And, indeed, it has happened 

 that to such accidents science has owed some of her 

 best physicists and naturalists. But it was not these, 

 their first and therefore most enjoyable discoveries, 

 that made them what they afterwards became; nor 

 had they at the outset even the right to an opinion 

 on the value of their finds. Years of strenuous and 

 unrenowned exertion had to follow, in which they 

 published little or nothing new, but gathered up the 

 old, and rediscovered, by experiment and observation, 

 what the records of the past preserved. 



What I deprecate is the claim to special attention 

 made by inexperienced stumblers on forgotten or un- 

 noticed fact*, remarkable or otherwise, on the sole 

 ground of the discovery. I deprecate the folly of the 

 youth who, because he has found a spear, leaps into 

 the empty chariot of Achilles, and, calling on the 

 Grecian host to follow him, lashes the horses for an 

 immediate attack on Troy; nor finds it out until he 

 is half way across the plain, that he rides alone, and 

 to destruction. I feel no admiration, no respect, for 

 the audacity with which our young recruits of science 

 rush unpanoplied into the thick of a discussion in- 

 volving the gieatest thinking of the age. They act 

 like animals at a conflagration. I hear on all sides 

 a noisy tumult of untrained intellects. Shall such 

 themes as the nebular hypothesis, the probable solid- 

 ity or fluidity of our planet, the metamorphosis of 

 rocks, the origin of serpentine or petroleum, the 

 cause of foliation, the stable or unstable geographical 

 relationships of continent to ocean, the probable rate 

 of geological time, the conditions of climate in the 

 ages of maximum ice, the probable centres of life- 

 dispersion, the unity or multiplicity of the human 

 race, the evolution of species, be babbled over by 

 men, the amount of whose eflicient work in any 

 branch of science is measurable with a foot-rule; 

 while those whose entire lives have been but one 

 exhausting struggle with the shapes which people 

 the darkness of science speak with bated breath and 

 downcast eyes of these great mysteries ? 



There is a shibboleth by which tyros in science can 

 always be detected, — their habitual employment of 

 the words 'doubtless,' 'certainly,' and 'demon- 

 strated.' To their inexperience of the universality 

 of error, every new statement in print over a name 

 noted in science, reads like a revelation of the abso- 

 lute; and every conclusion at which they themselves 

 arrive, after a more or less superficial study of the 

 limited number of facts which accident has given 

 them the opportunity to observe, seems a conclusion 

 too real to be impugned. I love the remembrance of 

 my youth, but I regret its dogmatic impertinences. 

 Young votaries of science draw their inspiration from 

 the maxim which best suits them, — ' try the value 

 of old truths bv new discoveries.' The veterans of 



science reverse the rule, and test all new discoveries 

 by a world of half-forgotten facts and well-establi>;hed 

 principles. The advancement of science is accom- 

 plished by the push and pull of these two ruliiig mo- 

 tives. No science were possible if the aged could 

 suppress the youthful, or the youthful could extirpate 

 the aged. But as surely as the agnosticism of age is 

 a witness to the weariness of fruitless speculation, so 

 surely the confidence of youth that every movement 

 must of nece-^sity be forward is aproof of insufficiency. 

 Let the military art instruct us. The raw recruit 

 is satisfied if old Bliicher waves his sword shouting 

 Vorwarts! But the sobered veteran is prepared to 

 see in flank movements, in retreats, in halts and hi- 

 trenchraents, steps of the campaign as necessary as 

 any charge at double-quick on hostile lines, or a 

 steady march in column into the enemy's country. 

 Let us suppose that in the last twelvemonth not one 

 surprising discovery in any region of the globe has 

 been made; that a hundred previously leported facts 

 have been examined and pronounced untrue; a hun- 

 dred printed memoirs, widely read and criticised, 

 been proved mistaken or absurd; a hundred long- 

 accepted generic or specific names, fossil or recent, 

 have been expunged from the lists; and that others, 

 like Halysites catenulata, or Spirifer disjuncta, have 

 lost their characteristic values; suppose any amount 

 of doubt to have been thrown upon any number of 

 popularly accepted theories, by failuies in applying 

 them to practise, like the theory of the anticlinal loca- 

 tion of gas-wells; in a word, suppose any amount of 

 smashing in any department of the great crockery- 

 shop of transcendental or applied science, — what does 

 it imply but the tendency of all inquiry, observation, 

 investigation, and experiment towards the better- 

 ment, which is the only true advancement, of science ? 

 As in the animal kingdom, the peaceful kinds are off- 

 set and held in check by analogous carnivores, for 

 fear of over-population; so in the world of thought, 

 the constructive theorists are perpetually preyed upon 

 by a corresponding class of natural enemies, the de- 

 structive critics, which keeps the field open and the 

 air sweet. The destruction of effete knowledge is the 

 perennial birth of that science which cannot be de- 

 stroyed. But, in recognizing the fact, we should re- 

 member that there is a science of items and a science 

 of fundamentals, which bear a relation to each other, 

 like that which subsists between the individuals of a 

 species and species per se; and that an indefinite mul- 

 tiplication of individuals may go on without any 

 visible modification of their specific character. The 

 population of Europe has grown in the last century 

 from a hundred and fifty to three hundred and 

 twenty millions of souls; but they are the same 

 Teutons, Celts, and Sclaves as ever. On the other 

 hand, the curve of population for France is almost 

 a horizontal straight line; but their national ad- 

 advancement has been phenomenal. What I wish to 

 illustrate is this evident ti'uth, that not by the mere 

 increment of number of facts learned, not by the 

 mere multiplication of discoverers, teachers and stu- 

 dents of those facts, but by the elevation of our aims, 

 by the enlargement of our views, by the refinement 



