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BIGELOW. 
here contended that this is the great intellectual process by 
which advancement can be profitably assured. The lack of 
system in criticism, the haphazard controversy, involving 
bitter feelings, slander, and errors of statement on the part 
of the critic, far less excusable than the honest but mistaken 
results of laborious investigation, should never have any 
place in science, properly so called. These questions should 
be put to himself by every searcher after truth and by every 
critic of other men’s work: 
1. Is the concept and the fact true f 
2. Is it something new , or is it already known in some 
other aspect ? 
3. Is it subordinate or superior to the allied facts and laws 
with which it is compared ? 
The first thought which comes to mind regarding the 
practical operation of such critical canons is this, that with 
the growth of human knowledge it is becoming harder every 
year to be a sound critic in any department of knowledge 
because of the immense range and the tremendous catalogue 
of facts which one must acquire in order to be able to apply 
the first and the second canons of truth and of newness to any 
candidate for matriculation in the school of science. The 
extension is fast becoming so great that our individual spe¬ 
cialization is beginning to make us quite incompetent critics, 
except in very narrow fields. Furthermore, many new ideas 
have their range legitimately in several adjacent depart¬ 
ments, as, for instance, astronomy, geodesy, meteorology, 
terrestrial magnetism, and pure physics, so that the compre¬ 
hensive minds who can conquer definitely these vast ranges 
of knowledge and are equipped for intelligible criticism must 
diminish in number. That is why the pseudo-critic already 
alluded to does so much harm by reason of his own lack of 
preparation in the premises. On the other hand, we may 
gain hope from the fact that the application of the third 
canon, of rank, is gradually building up sweeping incisive 
principles and laws so that a multitude of facts are already 
securely subordinated in their proper order. What a splen- 
