Volume II (part 3)

"And yet, strange to say, notwithstanding the near coincidence of all the results of the before-mentioned independent methods of investigation, the inevitable logical inference deduced by Mr. Airy is, that the whole question of solar motion in space, so far at least as accounting for the proper motion of the stars is concerned, [I have put in italics the words omitted by Mr. Reddie] appears to remain at this moment in doubt and abeyance."

Mr. Reddie has forked me, as he thinks, on a dilemma: if unaware, culpable ignorance; if aware, suppressive intention. But the thing is a trilemma, and the third horn, on which I elect to be placed, is surmounted by a doubly-stuffed seat. First, Mr. Airy has not changed his opinion about the fact of solar motion in space, but only suspends it as to the sufficiency of present means to give the amount and direction of the motion. Secondly, all that is alluded to in the Astronomical Report was said and printed before the Victoria proclamation appeared. So that the author, instead of drawing the tooth of the Astronomer Royal's pegtop, has burnt his own doll's nose.

William Herschel, and after him about six other astronomers, had aimed at determining, by the proper motions of the stars, the point of the heavens towards which the solar system is moving: their results were tolerably accordant. Mr. Airy, in 1859, proposed an improved method, and, applying it to stars of large proper motion, produced much the same result as Herschel. Mr. E. Dunkin, one of Mr. Airy's staff at Greenwich, applied Mr. Airy's method to a very large number of stars, and produced, again, nearly the same result as before. This paper was read to the Astronomical Society in March, 1863, was printed in abstract in the Notice of that month, was printed in full in the volume then current, and was referred to in the Annual Report of the Council in February, 1864, under the name of "the Astronomer Royal's elaborate investigation, as exhibited by Mr. Dunkin." Both Mr. Airy and Mr. Dunkin express grave doubts as to the sufficiency of the data: and, regarding the coincidence of all the results as highly curious, feel it necessary to wait for calculations made on better data. The report of the Council states these doubts. Mr. Reddie, who only published in September, 1863, happened to see the Report of February, 1864, assumes that the doubts were then first expressed, and declares that his book of September had the triumph of forcing the Astronomer Royal to abandon the fact of motion of the solar system by the February following. Had Mr. Reddie, when he saw that the Council were avowedly describing a memoir presented some time before, taken the precaution to find out when that memoir was presented, he would perhaps have seen that doubts of the results obtained, expressed by one astronomer in March, 1863, and by another in 1859, could not have been due to his publication of September, 1863. And any one else would have learnt that neither astronomer doubts the solar motion, though both doubt the sufficiency of present means to determine its amount and direction. This is implied in the omitted words, which Mr. Reddie—whose omission would have been dishonest if he had seen their meaning—no doubt took for pleonasm, superfluity, overmuchness. The rashness which pushed him headlong into the quillet that his thunderbolt had stopped the chariot of the Sun and knocked the Greenwich Phaeton off the box, is the same which betrayed him into yet grander error—which deserves the full word, quidlibet—about the Principia of Newton. There has been no change of opinion at all. When a person undertakes a long investigation, his opinion is that, at a certain date, there is prima facie ground for thinking a sound result may be obtained. Should it happen that the investigation ends in doubt upon the sufficiency of the grounds, the investigator is not put in the wrong. He knew beforehand that there was an alternative: and he takes the horn of the alternative indicated by his calculations. The two sides of this case present an instructive contrast. Eight astronomers produce nearly the same result, and yet the last two doubt the sufficiency of their means: compare them with the what's-his-name who rushes in where thing-em-bobs fear to tread.

I was not aware, until I had written what precedes, that Mr. Airy had given a sufficient answer on the point. Mr. Reddie says (Correspondent, Jan. 20, 1866):

"I claim to have forced Professor Airy to give up the notion of 'solar motion in space' altogether, for he admits it to be 'at present in doubt and abeyance.' I first made that claim in a letter addressed to the Astronomer Royal himself in June, 1864, and in replying, very courteously, to other portions of my letter, he did not gainsay that part of it."

Mr. Reddie is not ready at reading satire, or he never would have so missed the meaning of the courteous reply on one point, and the total silence upon another. Mr. Airy must be one of those peculiar persons who, when they do not think an assertion worth notice, let it alone, without noticing it by a notification of non-notice. He would never commit the bull of "Sir! I will not say a word on that subject." He would put it thus, "Sir! I will only say ten words on that subject,"—and, having thus said them, would proceed to something else. He assumed, as a matter of form, that Mr. Reddie would draw the proper inference from his silence: and this because he did not care whether or no the assumption was correct.

The Mechanics of the Heavens, which Mr. Reddie sends to be noticed, shall be noticed, so far as an extract goes:

"My connection with this subject is, indeed, very simply explained. In endeavoring to understand the laws of physical astronomy as generally taught, I happened to entertain some doubt whether gravitating bodies could revolve, and having afterwards imbibed some vague idea that the laws of the universe were chemical and physical rather than mechanical, and somehow connected with electricity and magnetism as opposing correlative forces—most probably suggested to my mind, as to many others, by the transcendent discoveries made in electro-magnetism by Professor Faraday—my former doubts about gravitation were revived, and I was led very naturally to try and discover whether a gravitating body really could revolve; and I became convinced it could not, before I had ever presumed to look into the demonstrations of the Principia."

This is enough against the book, without a word from me: I insert it only to show those who know the subject what manner of writer Mr. Reddie is. It is clear that "presumed" is a slip of the pen; it should have been condescended.

Mr. Reddie represents me as dreaming over paltry paradoxes. He is right; many of my paradoxes are paltry: he is wrong; I am wide awake to them. A single moth, beetle, or butterfly, may be a paltry thing; but when a cabinet is arranged by genus and species, we then begin to admire the infinite variety of a system constructed on a wonderful sameness of leading characteristics. And why should paradoxes be denied that collective importance, paltry as many of them may individually be, which is accorded to moths, beetles, or butterflies? Mr. Reddie himself sees that "there is a method in" my "mode of dealing with paradoxes." I hope I have atoned for the scantiness of my former article, and put the demonstrated impossibility of gravitation on that level with Hubongramillposanfy arithmetic and inhabited atoms which the demonstrator—not quite without reason—claims for it.

In the Introduction to a collected edition of the three works, Mr. Reddie describes his Mechanism of the Heavens, from which I have just quoted, as—

"a public challenge offered to the British Association and the mathematicians at Cambridge, in August, 1862, calling upon them to point to a single demonstration in the Principia or elsewhere, which even attempts to prove that Universal Gravitation is possible, or to show that a gravitating body could possibly revolve about a center of attraction. The challenge was not accepted, and never will be. No such demonstration exists. And the public must judge for themselves as to the character of a so-called "certain science," which thus shrinks from rigid examination, and dares not defend itself when publicly attacked: also of the character of its teachers, who can be content to remain dumb under such circumstances."

ON PARADOXERS IN GENERAL.

The above is the commonplace talk of the class, of which I proceed to speak without more application to this paradoxer than to that. It reminds one of the funny young rascals who used, in times not yet quite forgotten, to abuse the passengers, as long as they could keep up with the stage coach; dropping off at last with "Why don't you get down and thrash us? You're afraid, you're afraid!" They will allow the public to judge for themselves, but with somewhat of the feeling of the worthy uncle in Tom Jones, who, though he would let young people choose for themselves, would have them choose wisely. They try to be so awfully moral and so ghastly satirical that they must be answered: and they are best answered in their own division. We have all heard of the way in which sailors cat's-pawed the monkeys: they taunted the dwellers in the trees with stones, and the monkeys taunted them with cocoa-nuts in return. But these were silly dendrobats: had they belonged to the British Association they would have said—No! No! dear friends; it is not in the itinerary: if you want nuts, you must climb, as we do. The public has referred the question to Time: the procedure of this great king I venture to describe, from precedents, by an adaptation of some smart anapæstic tetrameters—your anapæst is the foot for satire to halt on, both in Greek and English—which I read about twenty years ago, and with the point of which I was much tickled. Poetasters were laughed at; but Mr. Slum, whom I employed—Mr. Charles Dickens obliged me with his address—converted the idea into that of a hit at mathematicasters, as easily as he turned the Warren acrostic into Jarley. As he observed, when I settled his little account, it is cheaper than any prose, though the broom was not stolen quite ready made:

Forty stripes save one for the smaller Paradoxers.

Hark to the wisdom the sages preach

Who never have learnt what they try to teach.

We are the lights of the age, they say!

We are the men, and the thinkers we!

So we build up guess-work the livelong day,

In a topsy-turvy sort of way,

Some with and some wanting a plus b.

Let the British Association fuss;

What are theirs to the feats to be wrought by us?

Shall the earth stand still? Will the round come square?

Must Isaac's book be the nest of a mare?

Ought the moon to be taught by the laws of space

To turn half round without right-about-face?

Our whimsey crotchets will manage it all;

Deep! Deep! posterity will them call!

Though the world, for the present, lets them fall

Down! Down! to the twopenny box of the stall!

Thus they—But the marplot Time stands by,

With a knowing wink in his funny old eye.

He grasps by the top an immense fool's cap,

Which he calls a philosophaster-trap:

And rightly enough, for while these little men

Croak loud as a concert of frogs in a fen,

He first singles out one, and then another,

Down goes the cap—lo! a moment's pother,

A spirit like that which a rushlight utters

As just at the last it kicks and gutters:

When the cruel smotherer is raised again

Only snuff, and but little of that, will remain.

But though uno avulso thus comes every day

Non deficit alter is also in play:

For the vacant parts are, one and all,

Soon taken by puppets just as small;

Who chirp, chirp, chirp, with a grasshopper's glee,

We're the lamps of the Universe, We! We! We!

But Time, whose speech is never long,—

He hasn't time for it—stops the song

And says—Lilliput lamps! leave the twopenny boxes,

And shine in the Budget of Paradoxes!

When a paradoxer parades capital letters and diagrams which are as good as Newton's to all who know nothing about it, some persons wonder why science does not rise and triturate the whole thing. This is why: all who are fit to read the refutation are satisfied already, and can, if they please, detect the paradoxer for themselves. Those who are not fit to do this would not know the difference between the true answer and the new capitals and diagrams on which the delighted paradoxer would declare that he had crumbled the philosophers, and not they him. Trust him for having the last word: and what matters it whether he crow the unanswerable sooner or later? There are but two courses to take. One is to wait until he has committed himself in something which all can understand, as Mr. Reddie has done in his fancy about the Astronomer Royal's change of opinion: he can then be put in his true place. The other is to construct a Budget of Paradoxes, that the world may see how the thing is always going on, and that the picture I have concocted by cribbing and spoiling a bit of poetry is drawn from life. He who wonders at there being no answer has seen one or two: he does not know that there are always fifty with equal claims, each of whom regards his being ranked with the rest as forty-nine distinct and several slanders upon himself, the great Mully Ully Gue. And the fifty would soon be five hundred if any notice were taken of them. They call mankind to witness that science will not defend itself, though publicly attacked in terms which might sting a pickpocket into standing up for his character: science, in return, allows mankind to witness or not, at pleasure, that it does not defend itself, and yet receives no injury from centuries of assault. Demonstrative reason never raises the cry of Church in Danger! and it cannot have any Dictionary of Heresies except a Budget of Paradoxes. Mistaken claimants are left to Time and his extinguisher, with the approbation of all thinking non-claimants: there is no need of a succession of exposures. Time gets through the job in his own workmanlike manner as already described.

On looking back more than twenty years, I find among my cuttings the following passage, relating to a person who had signalized himself by an effort to teach comets to the conductor of the Nautical Almanac:

"Our brethren of the literary class have not the least idea of the small amount of appearance of knowledge which sets up the scientific charlatan. Their world is large, and there are many who have that moderate knowledge, and perception of what is knowledge, before which extreme ignorance is detected in its first prank. There is a public of moderate cultivation, for the most part sound in its judgment, always ready in its decisions. Accordingly, all their successful pretenders have some pretension. It is not so in science. Those who have a right to judge are fewer and farther between. The consequence is, that many scientific pretenders have nothing but pretension."

This is nearly as applicable now as then. It is impossible to make those who have not studied for themselves fully aware of the truth of what I have quoted. The best chance is collection of cases; in fact, a Budget of Paradoxes. Those who have no knowledge of the subject can thus argue from the seen to the unseen. All can feel the impracticability of the Hubongramillposanfy numeration, and the absurdity of the equality of contour of a regular pentagon and hexagon in one and the same circle. Many may accordingly be satisfied, on the assurance of those who have studied, that there is as much of impracticability, or as much of absurdity, in things which are hidden under

"Sines, tangents, secants, radius, cosines

Subtangents, segments and all those signs;

Enough to prove that he who read 'em

Was just as mad as he who made 'em."

Not that I mean to be disrespectful to mathematical terms: they are short and easily explained, and compete favorably with those of most other subjects: for instance, with

"Horse-pleas, traverses, demurrers,

Jeofails, imparlances, and errors,

Averments, bars, and protestandos,

And puis d'arreign continuandos."

From which it appears that, taking the selections made by satirists for our samples, there are, one with another, four letters more in a law term than in one of mathematics. But pleading has been simplified of late years.

All paradoxers can publish; and any one who likes may read. But this is not enough; they find that they cannot publish, or those who can find they are not read, and they lay their plans athwart the noses of those who, they think, ought to read. To recommend them to be content with publication, like other authors, is an affront: of this I will give the reader an amusing instance. My good nature, of which I keep a stock, though I do not use it all up in this Budget, prompts me to conceal the name.

I received the following letter, accompanied by a prospectus of a work on metaphysics, physics, astronomy, etc. The author is evidently one whom I should delight to honor:

"Sir,—A friend of mine has mentioned your name in terms of panigeric [sic], as being of high standing in mathematics, and of greatly original thought. I send you the enclosed without comment; and, assuming that the bent of your mind is in free inquiry, shall feel a pleasure in showing you my portfolio, which, as a mathematician, you will acknowledge to be deeply interesting, even in an educational point of view. The work is complete, and the system so far perfected as to place it above criticism; and, so far as regards astronomy, as will Ptolemy beyond rivalry [sic: no doubt some words omitted]. Believe me to be, Sir, with the profoundest respect, etc. The work is the result of thirty-five years' travel and observation, labor, expense, and self-abnegation."

I replied to the effect that my time was fully occupied, and that I was obliged to decline discussion with many persons who have views of their own; that the proper way is to publish, so that those who choose may read when they can find leisure. I added that I should advise a precursor in the shape of a small pamphlet, as two octavo volumes would be too much for most persons. This was sound advice; but it is not the first, second, or third time that it has proved very unpalatable. I received the following answer, to which I take the liberty of prefixing a bit of leonine wisdom:

"Si doceas stultum, lætum non dat tibi vultum;

Odit te multum; vellet te scire sepultum."

"Sir,—I pray you pardon the error I unintentionally have fallen into; deceived by the F.R.S. [I am not F.R.S.] I took you to be a man of science [omnis homo est animal, Sortes est homo, ergo Sortes est animal] instead of the mere mathematician, or human calculating-machine. Believe me, Sir, you also have mistaken your mission, as I have mine. I wrote to you as I would to any other man well up in mathematics, with the intent to call your attention to a singular fact of omission by Euclid, and other great mathematicians: and, in selecting you, I did you an honor which, from what I have just now heard, was entirely out of place. I think, considering the nature of the work set forth in the prospectus, you are guilty of both folly and presumption, in assuming the character of a patron; for your own sense ought to have assured you that was such my object I should not have sought him in a De Morgan, who exists only by patronage of others. On the other hand, I deem it to be an unpardonable piece of presumption in offering your advice upon a subject the magnitude, importance, and real utility of which you know nothing about: by doing so you have offered me a direct insult. The system is a manual of Philosophy, a one inseparable whole of metaphysics and physic; embracing points the most interesting, laws the most important, doctrines the most essential to advance man in accordance with the spirit of the times. I may not live to see it in print; for, at ——, life at best is uncertain: but, live or die, be assured Sir, it is not my intention to debase the work by seeking patronage, or pandering to the public taste. Your advice was the less needed, seeing I am an old-established ——. I remain, etc.—P.S. You will oblige me by returning the prospectus of my work."

My reader will, I am sure, not take this transition from the "profoundest respect" to the loftiest insolence for an apocraphical correspondence, to use a word I find in the Prospectus: on my honor it is genuine. He will be better employed in discovering whether I exist by patronizing others, or by being patronized by them. I make any one who can find it out a fair offer: I will give him my patronage if I turn out to be Bufo, on condition he gives me his, if I turn out to be Bavius. I need hardly say that I considered the last letter to be one of those to which no answer is so good as no answer.

These letters remind me in one respect of the correspondents of the newspapers. My other party wrote because a friend had pointed me out: but he would not have written if he had known what another friend told him just in time for the second letter. The man who sends his complaint to the newspaper very often says, in effect, "Don't imagine, Sir, that I read your columns; but a friend who sometimes does has told me ..." It is worded thus: "My attention has been directed to an article in your paper of ..." Many thanks to my friend's friends for not mentioning the Budget: had my friend's attention been directed to it I might have lost a striking example of the paradoxer in search of a patron. That my Friend was on this scent in the first letter is revealed in the second. Language was given to man to conceal his thoughts; but it is not every one who can do it.

Among the most valuable information which my readers will get from me is comparison of the reactions of paradoxers, when not admitted to argument, or when laughed at. Of course, they are misrepresented; and at this they are angry, or which is the same thing, take great pains to assure the reader that they are not. So far natural, and so far good; anything short of concession of a case which must be seriously met by counter-reasons is sure to be misrepresentation. My friend Mr. James Smith and my friend Mr. Reddie are both terribly misrepresented: they resent it by some insinuations in which it is not easy to detect whether I am a conscious smotherer of truth, or only muddle-headed and ignorant. [This was written before I received my last communication from Mr. James Smith. He tells me that I am wrong in saying that his work in which I stand in the pillory is all reprint: I have no doubt I confounded some of it with some of the manuscript or slips which I had received from my much not-agreed-with correspondent. He adds that my mistake was intentional, and that my reason is obvious to the reader. This is information, as the sea-serpent said when he read in the newspaper that he had a mane and tusks.]

THE DOUBLE VAHU PROCESS.

My friend Dr. Thorn sees deeper into my mystery. By the way, he still sends an occasional touch at the old subject; and he wants me particularly to tell my readers that the Latin numeral letters, if M be left out, give 666. And so they do: witness DCLXVI. A person who thinks of the origin of symbols will soon see that 666 is our number because we have five fingers on each hand: had we had but four, our mystic number would have been expressed by 555, and would have stood for our present 365. Had n been the number on each hand, the great number would have been

(n + 1) (4n + 2n + 1)

With no finger on each hand, the number would have been 1: with one finger less than none at all on each hand, it would have been 0. But what does this mean? Here is a question for an algebraical paradoxer! So soon as we have found out how many fingers the inhabitants of any one planet have on each hand, we have the means of knowing their number of the Beast, and thence all about them. Very much struck with this hint of discovery, I turned my attention to the means of developing it. The first point was to clear my vision of all the old cataracts. I propose the following experiment, subject of course to the consent of parties. Let Dr. Thorn Double-Vahu Mr. James Smith, and Thau Mr. Reddie: if either be deparadoxed by the treatment, I will consent to undergo it myself. Provided always that the temperature required be not so high as the Doctor hints at: if the Turkish Baths will do for this world, I am content.

The three paradoxers last named and myself have a pentasyllable convention, under which, though we go far beyond civility, we keep within civilization. Though Mr. James Smith pronounced that I must be dishonest if I did not see his argument, which he knew I should not do [to say nothing of recent accusation]; though Dr. Thorn declared me a competitor for fire and brimstone—and my wife, too, which doubles the joke: though Mr. Reddie was certain I had garbled him, evidently on purpose to make falsehood appear truth; yet all three profess respect for me as to everything but power to see truth, or candor to admit it. And on the other hand, though these were the modes of opening communication with me, and though I have no doubt that all three are proper persons of whom to inquire whether I should go up-stairs or down-stairs, etc., yet I am satisfied they are thoroughly respectable men, as to everything but reasoning. And I dare say our several professions are far more true in extent than in many which are made under more parliamentary form. We find excuses for each other: they make allowances for my being hoodwinked by Aristotle, by Newton, by the Devil; and I permit them to feel, for I know they cannot get on without it, that their reasons are such as none but a knave or a sinner can resist. But they are content with cutting a slice each out of my character: neither of them is more than an uncle, a Bone-a-part; I now come to a dreadful nephew, Bone-the-whole.

I will not give the name of the poor fellow who has fallen so far below both the honestum and the utile, to say nothing of the decorum or the dulce. He is the fourth who has taken elaborate notice of me; and my advice to him would be, Nec quarta loqui persona laboret. According to him, I scorn humanity, scandalize learning, and disgrace the press; it admits of no manner of doubt that my object is to mislead the public and silence truth, at the expense of the interests of science, the wealth of the nation, and the lives of my fellow men. The only thing left to be settled is, whether this is due to ignorance, natural distaste for truth, personal malice, a wish to curry favor with the Astronomer Royal, or mere toadyism. The only accusation which has truth in it is, that I have made myself a "public scavenger of science": the assertion, which is the most false of all is, that the results of my broom and spade are "shot right in between the columns of" the Athenæum. I declare I never in my life inserted a word between the columns of the Athenæum: I feel huffed and miffed at the very supposition. I have made myself a public scavenger; and why not? Is the mud never to be collected into a heap? I look down upon the other scavengers, of whom there have been a few—mere historical drudges; Montucla, Hutton, etc.—as not fit to compete with me. I say of them what one crossing-sweeper said of the rest: "They are well enough for the common thing; but put them to a bit of fancy-work, such as sweeping round a post, and see what a mess they make of it!" Who can touch me at sweeping round a paradoxer? If I complete my design of publishing a separate work, an old copy will be fished up from a stall two hundred years hence by the coming man, and will be described in an article which will end by his comparing our century with his own, and sighing out in the best New Zealand pronunciation—

"Dans ces tems-là

C'était déjà comme ça!"

ORTHODOX PARADOXERS.

And pray, Sir! I have been asked by more than one—do your orthodox never fall into mistake, nor rise into absurdity? They not only do both, but they admit it of each other very freely; individually, they are convinced of sin, but not of any particular sin. There is not a syndoxer among them all but draws his line in such a way as to include among paradoxers a great many whom I should exclude altogether from this work. My worst specimens are but exaggerations of what may be found, occasionally, in the thoughts of sagacious investigators. At the end of the glorious dream, we learn that there is a way to Hell from the gates of Heaven, as well as from the City of Destruction: and that this is true of other things besides Christian pilgrimage is affirmed at the end of the Budget of Paradoxes. If D'Alembert had produced enough of a quality to match his celebrated mistake on the chance of throwing head in two throws, he would have been in my list. If Newton had produced enough to match his reception of the story that Nausicaa, Homer's Phæacian princess, invented the celestial sphere, followed by his serious surmise that she got it from the Argonauts,—then Newton himself would have had an appearance entered for him, in spite of the Principia. In illustration, I may cite a few words from Tristram Shandy:

"'A soldier,' cried my uncle Toby, interrupting the Corporal, 'is no more exempt from saying a foolish thing, Trim, than a man of letters.'—'But not so often, an' please your honor,' replied the Corporal. My uncle Toby gave a nod."

I now proceed to die out. Some prefatory remarks will follow in time. I shall have occasion to insist that all is not barren: I think I shall find, on casting up, that two out of five of my paradoxers are not to be utterly condemned. Among the better lot will be found all gradations of merit; at the same time, as was remarked on quite a different subject, there may be little to choose between the last of the saved and the first of the lost. The higher and better class is worthy of blame; the lower and worse class is worthy of praise. The higher men are to be reproved for not taking up things in which they could do some good: the lower men are to be commended for taking up things in which they can do no great harm. The circle problem is like Peter Peebles's lawsuit:

"'But, Sir, I should really spoil any cause thrust on me so hastily.'—'Ye cannot spoil it, Alan,' said my father, 'that is the very cream of the business, man,—... the case is come to that pass that Stair or Arniston could not mend it, and I don't think even you, Alan, can do it much harm.'"

I am strongly reminded of the monks in the darker part of the Middle Ages. To a certain proportion of them, perhaps two out of five, we are indebted for the preservation of literature, and their contemporaries for good teaching and mitigation of socials evils. But the remaining three were the fleas and flies and thistles and briars with whom the satirist lumps them, about a century before the Reformation:

"Flen, flyys, and freris, populum domini male cædunt;

Thystlis and breris crescentia gramina lædunt.

Christe nolens guerras qui cuncta pace tueris,

Destrue per terras breris, flen, flyys, and freris.

Flen, flyys, and freris, foul falle hem thys fyften yeris,

For non that her is lovit flen, flyys ne freris."

I should not be quite so savage with my second class. Taken together, they may be made to give useful warning to those who are engaged in learning under better auspices: aye, even useful hints; for bad things are very often only good things spoiled or misused. My plan is that of a predecessor in the time of Edward the Second:

"Meum est propositum genti imperitæ

Artes frugi reddere melioris vitæ."

To this end I have spoken with freedom of books as books, of opinions as opinions, of ignorance as ignorance, of presumption as presumption; and of writers as I judge may be fairly inferred from what they have written. Some—to whom I am therefore under great obligation—have permitted me to enlarge my plan by assaults to which I have alluded; assaults which allow a privilege of retort, of which I have often availed myself; assaults which give my readers a right of partnership in the amusement which I myself have received.

For the present I cut and run: a Catiline, pursued by a chorus of Ciceros, with Quousque tandem? Quamdiu nos? Nihil ne te? ending with, In te conferri pestem istam jam pridem oportebat, quam tu in nos omnes jamdiu machinaris! I carry with me the reflection that I have furnished to those who need it such a magazine of warnings as they will not find elsewhere; a signatis cavetote: and I throw back at my pursuers—Valete, doctores sine doctrina; facite ut proxima congressu vos salvos corporibus et sanos mentibus videamus. Here ends the Budget of Paradoxes.