1880.J English and American Physique. 109 
evidence of the Americanisation of certain classes in Great 
Britain. This stout and virile people, so bold in adventure 
and in battle, tremble in the presence of new ideas — as the 
savages whom they conquer and subdue, on the approach of 
a storm. The scientific discoveries of Germany are a terror ; 
they fear an irruption from the Continent which may over- 
whelm and bear away their philosophic heirlooms ; and their 
great effort is to erect and guard a line of defence, to keep 
back the surges of new truths, as the Dutch make dykes 
against the inroads of the sea. 
Thus it is that men in the highest stations, either in church 
or politics, are always under arms, expected to do duty against 
the invasions of Continental philosophy. Half the literature 
of the last quarter century of Great Britain, outside of 
fiction, is devoted to proving the truth of the untrue and the 
undemonstrable. Their very best men will probably soon 
begin to see that this chronic alarm is needless. Supersti- 
tion is always safe — ignorance everywhere is its own protec- 
tion ; in all the conflicts between intellect and emotion, 
intellect— with here and their an interlude — is almost sure 
to be worsted and trampled upon. The demonstrably false 
can always be trusted to take care of the things of itself ; it 
is truth alone that has cause to be afraid. Science, along 
all its lines, is open to attack, in peril even of its existence 
— none of its facts being so walled about as the unproved 
and the untrue. Truth is a plant as sensitive and tender as 
it is precious and rare ; like all noble and highly developed 
organisms, it is liable to fatal injury and quick decay : 
bitten by frost, choked by weeds, broken by storms, the 
object of attack for all the non* expertness of mankind; 
error alone has the elements of enduring life. On this toss- 
ing sea of humanity, families, tribes, peoples, nations, and 
empires rise and fall in endless pulsations arts, literatuies, 
sciences, discoveries, philosophies appearing for a moment 
on the crest of the waters, then sinking into the fathomless 
depths; but over all, unchanged save in form, rests a cloud 
that through the ages never lifts, and a darkness that is 
scarcely illumined but by the momentary lightnings that 
flame on its borders, and fugitive glimpses of the distant 
stars. It is the undemonstrable, and the demonstrably 
false, that have ever ruled mankind, and are destined to 
rule ’it. The superstitions and mythologies of Egypt are 
read in the hieroglyphics on her temples and pyramids and 
monuments, but the arts that reared those structures have 
passed for ever from the possession of men ; knowledge dies, 
while delusions live. 
