May success never fail him,
In Polar Geometrical mining;
Till his foes be as tamed
As his works are far-famed
For true philosophic refining."
Walsh's system is, that all mathematics and physics are wrong: there is hardly one proposition in Euclid which is demonstrated. His example ought to warn all who rely on their own evidence to their own success. He was not, properly speaking, insane; he only spoke his mind more freely than many others of his class. The poor fellow died in the Cork union, during the famine. He had lived a happy life, contemplating his own perfections, like Brahma on the lotus-leaf.[[594]]
GROWTH OF FREEDOM OF OPINION.
The year 1825 brings me to about the middle of my Athenæum list: that is, so far as mere number of names mentioned is concerned. Freedom of opinion, beyond a doubt, is gaining ground, for good or for evil, according to what the speaker happens to think: admission of authority is no longer made in the old way. If we take soul-cure and body-cure, divinity and medicine, it is manifest that a change has come over us. Time was when it was enough that dose or dogma should be certified by "Il a été ordonné, Monsieur, il a été ordonné,"[[595]] as the apothecary said when he wanted to operate upon poor de Porceaugnac. Very much changed: but whether for good or for evil does not now matter; the question is, whether contempt of demonstration such as our paradoxers show has augmented with the rejection of dogmatic authority. It ought to be just the other way: for the worship of reason is the system on which, if we trust them, the deniers of guidance ground their plan of life. The following attempt at an experiment on this point is the best which I can make; and, so far as I know, the first that ever was made.
Say that my list of paradoxers divides in 1825: this of itself proves nothing, because so many of the earlier books are lost, or not likely to be come at. It would be a fearful rate of increase which would make the number of paradoxes since 1825 equal to the whole number before that date. Let us turn now to another collection of mine, arithmetical books, of which I have published a list. The two collections are similarly circumstanced as to new and old books; the paradoxes had no care given to the collection of either; the arithmetical books equal care to both. The list of arithmetical books, published in 1847, divides at 1735; the paradoxes, up to 1863, divide at 1825. If we take the process which is most against the distinction, and allow every year