134 
APPENDIX. 
exactitude if they see but the smallest portion above 
the water; they are the men whose sight is sharpened 
by^use, whose book is nature, whose knowledge is 
practical, and whose evidence on such a subject is 
far better than any other. The men 6 who go down 
to the sea in ships ’ are they of whom we must 
inquire its wonders. They, indeed, may see a 
school of porpoises following each other, head to tail; 
they may watch their gambols, and haply single out 
a big one for a trial of the harpoon or the? rifle ; but 
no seaman would mistake them for anything else. 
“ In all our inquiries, we must have regard to the 
capacity of a witness for giving information. Even 
the microscope, the secret-revealing implement of the 
learned, requires a kind of education on the part of 
the beholder. Doubtless the mariner, who first 
peeped through the wonder-working tube, would ar¬ 
rive at conclusions as erroneous as the learned fool 
who comments on the creatures of the deep ; but he 
surely would not venture to print his blunders, or 
pass off his crude observations a» worthy the atten¬ 
tion of the world. And yet our savans are for ever 
doing this, and for ever giving opinions on subjects 
which they cannot understand ; promulgating hypoth¬ 
eses founded on imagined facts; drawing ideal pic¬ 
tures of nature, and reasoning on them as truths ; 
throwing aside realities for fictions; and hermetically 
sealing their eyes, and closing their ears, against the 
entrance of information, because information itself 
is supposed to clash with preconceived opinions, to 
interfere with hypotheses to which they are pledged, 
and, in fine, to damage their claim to the exclusive 
disposal of scientific knowledge : their object is to 
represent all matters as they ivould have them , with¬ 
out any reference to what they are?' 
