Page:The Harveian oration, 1893.djvu/33

 of untrue, and leave it again without appreciation of its importance, is the sign, not of intelligence, but of frivolity. We are told that of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, one (I believe it was Thales) taught that the Sun did not go round the Earth, but the Earth round the Sun, and hence it has been said that Thales anticipated Copernicus—a flagrant example of the fallacy in question. A crowd of idle philosophers, discussing all things in Heaven and Earth through the long summer days and balmy nights of Attica, must sometimes have hit on a true opinion, if only by accident; but Thales, or whoever broached the heliocentric dogma, had no reason for his belief, and showed himself not more, but less reasonable than his companions. The crude theories and gross absurdities of Phrenology are not in the least justified, or even excused, by our present knowledge of cerebral localization; nor do the baseless speculations