Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/168

156 suppose otherwise, is to ascribe to him a rashness which no disciplined man of science could be guilty of.

See, then, the critical capacity variously exhibited in the space of a single sentence. The reviewer, quite erroneously, thinks that observations unguided by hypotheses suffice for physical discoveries. He seems unaware that, on a priori grounds, the law of the inverse square had been suspected as the law of some cosmical force, before Newton. He asserts, without warrant, that no such a priori conception preceded, in Newton's mind, his observations and calculations. He confounds the law of variation of a force with the existence of a force varying according to that law. And he concludes that Newton could have had no a priori conception of the law of variation, because he did not assert the existence of a force varying according to this law in defiance of the evidence as then presented to him!

Now that I have analyzed, with these results, the first of his criticisms, the reader will neither expect me to waste time in similarly dealing with the rest seriatim nor will he wish to have his own time occupied in following the analysis. To the evidence thus furnished of the reviewer's fitness for the task he undertakes, it will suffice if I add an illustration or two of the animus which leads him to make grave imputations on trivial grounds, and to ignore the evidence which contradicts his interpretations.

Because I have spoken of a balanced system, like that formed by the sun and planets, as having the "peculiarity, that though the constituents of the system have relative movements, the system, as a whole, has no movement," he unhesitatingly assumes me to be unaware that, in a system of bodies whose movements are not balanced, it is equally true that the centre of gravity remains constant. Ignorance of a general principle in dynamics is alleged against me solely because of this colloquial use of the word "peculiarity," where I should have used a word (and there is no word perfectly fit) free from the implication of exclusiveness. If the reviewer were to assert that arrogance is a "peculiarity" of critics; and if I were thereupon to charge him with entire ignorance of mankind, many of whom besides critics are arrogant, he would rightly say that my conclusion was a very large one to draw from so small a premise.

To this example of strained inference I will join an example of what seems like deliberate misconstruction. From one of my essays (not among the works he professes to deal with) the reviewer, to strengthen his attack, brings a strange mistake; which, even without inquiry, any fair-minded reader would see must be an oversight. A statement true of a single body acted on by a tractive force, I have inadvertently pluralized; being so possessed by another aspect of the question, as to overlook the obvious fact that with a plurality of bodies the statement became untrue. Not only, however, does the reviewer ignore various evidences furnished by the works before him,