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190 what they were or in thinking what they did. On the other hand, he made out that those who belonged to his class, or who thought as he did, were all that was good, elevated and virtuous. But as his audience never by any chance consisted of the people to whom the lecture was nominally addressed, as all were of his own way of thinking, every word he spoke flattered and complimented them and disparaged those who were not of their sect. Thus, if it were a lecture given by one of the rich classes nominally to the poor—or by one of the working-classes nominally to the wealthy idlers, or by a transcendentalist to anti-transcendentalists, or vice versâ—the audience in each case, being exclusively of the lecturer's way of thinking, felt all the gratification naturally experienced by persons who are listening to laudation of themselves and depreciation of their neighbours.

I was astonished to find that the same sort of thing prevailed among men of science. They constituted themselves into a guild or close corporation, and none were admitted into their clique or set unless trained and educated in a certain way. Everything done by a member of the guild was praised and defended by the other members to such an extent that one would have said it was "a society for mutual admiration" rather than an assembly of scientific men. It was amusing to see how a scientific discovery by an outsider was received by the scientific clique. At first it was ignored—no one noticed it. But if the public took it up, then the scientific fraternity condescended to notice it, but only to condemn it, and that without inquiry, "It does not come from one of us, therefore it is naught." By and by, when