Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/508

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A correspondent of the Nation from Baltimore, quoting the above passage, characterizes the "glaring injustice" of the concluding portion of its article, and adds: "Any candid reader can see that the passage on which your reviewer bases such serious imputations cannot possibly bear the interpretation which every one reading it as given in your review is compelled to put upon it. Prof. Tyndall never indicates that it was the authority of Prof. Henry that impeded him in his researches." The sentence italicised in the extract upon the previous page is perfectly conclusive in showing what Prof. Tyndall did mean by the authority which embarrassed him until he rejected it.

In his letter Prof. Tyndall puts an end to the charge, so that the Nation is compelled to acknowledge itself "in error in supposing that the claim of Dr. Tyndall to have ruined authority was aimed at Prof. Henry." One would think that, when the Nation's critic had been convicted of blundering by a correspondent, and when his fabric of detraction had been so effectually demolished by Prof. Tyndall himself that the writer was compelled to back out of it, he would have had the grace to drop the subject. But, on the contrary, he renews the insulting imputation. Having made a slanderous charge entirely upon the assumption that Prof. Tyndall was exulting in the ruin of Prof. Henry's authority, and having barbed his article with this libel, when it was swept away, he says: "It would have been more in order for him to show the propriety of his language in claiming to have 'ruined' the 'authority' of any one among his scientific predecessors, for it was on the alleged self-conceit implied in such a claim as made by himself that we based our 'peroratory invective.'"

Now, we aver that there is nothing in the passage quoted that is open to the offensive construction here put upon it, and which never would have been thought of, but for the unscrupulous distortion of its meaning by the Nation's critic; but that the real import of the extract is entirely contrary to that which has been ascribed to it. That which was written to enforce the lesson of cautious self-examination and circumspection in dealing with the mental difficulties of scientific research is wrested into an opposite expression of arrogance and self-conceit. It is not to be forgotten, here, that the scientific man, to the extent of his originality and power, is a questioner of things established. His attitude is that of an enemy of authority. It is his recognized business, as evinced by the common forms of speech, to "subvert" authority, to "break down" authority, to "overthrow," "crush" and "ruin" authority. Call the motive which impels the man of science what you please, the fact remains that in virtue of his being a man of science, aiming to arrive at new views, he is a destroyer of authority. But just because this is his necessary work he is in danger from the state of mind it produces; and it becomes important not to forget that there is good as well as bad in authority. Prof. Tyndall simply intimated the need there is that the inquirer should