at all. The gentleman who read Euclid, all except the As and Bs and the pictures of scratches and scrawls, is the type of a numerous class.
The reviewer finds that the word amosgepotically, used by A. B., is utterly mysterious and incomprehensible. He hopes his translation of the bit of Greek will shield him from imputation of ignorance: and thinks the word may be referred to the "obscure dialect" out of which sprung aneroid, kalos geusis sauce, and Anaxyridian trousers. To lump the first two phrases with the third smacks of ignorance in a Greek critic; for ἀναξυριδια, breeches, would have turned up in the lexicon; and kalos geusis, though absurd, is not obscure. And ἀμωσγεπως, somehow or other, is as easily found as ἀναξυριδια. The word aneroid, I admit, has puzzled better scholars than the critic: but never one who knows the unscholarlike way in which words ending in ειδης have been rendered. The aneroid barometer does not use a column of air in the same way as the old instrument. Now ἀεροειδης—properly like the atmosphere—is by scientific non-scholarship rendered having to do with the atmosphere; and ἀναεροειδης—say anaëroid—denies having to do with the atmosphere; a nice thing to say of an instrument which is to measure the weight of the atmosphere. One more absurdity, and we have aneroid, and there you are. The critic ends with a declaration that nothing in the book shakes his faith in a Quarterly reviewer who said that suspension of opinion, until further evidence arrives, is justifiable: a strange summing up for an article which insists upon utter rejection being unavoidable.[[348]] The expressed aim of both A. B. and C. D. was to excite inquiry, and get further evidence: until this is done, neither asks for a verdict.
Oh where! and oh where! is old Medicine's learning gone! There was some in the days of yore, when Popery
was on! And it's oh! for some Greek, just to find a word upon! The reviewer who, lexicon in hand, can neither make out anaxyridical, amosgepotical, kalos geusis, nor distinguish them from aneroid, cannot be trusted when he says he has translated a sentence of Aristotle. He may have done it; but, as he says of spiritualism, we must suspend our opinion until further evidence shall arrive.
We now come to the theological review. I have before alluded to the faults of logic which are Protestant necessities: but I never said that Protestant argument had nothing but paralogism. The writer before me attains this completeness: from beginning to end he is of that confusion and perversion which, as applied to interpretation of the New Testament, is so common as to pass unnoticed by sermon-hearers; but which, when applied out of church, is exposed with laughter in all subjects except theology. I shall take one instance, putting some words in italics.
| A. B. My state of mind, which refers the whole either to unseen intelligence, or something which man has never had any conception of, proves me to be out of the pale of the Royal Society. | Theological Critic. ... he proceeds to argue that he himself is outside its sacred pale because he refers all these strange phenomena to unseen spiritual intelligence. |
The possibility of a yet unimagined cause is insisted on in several places. On this ground it is argued by A. B. that spiritualists are "incautious" for giving in at once to the spirit doctrine. But, it is said, they may be justified by the philosophers, who make the flint axes, as they call them, to be the works of men, because no one can see what else they can be. This kind of adoption, condemned as a conclusion, is approved as a provisional theory, suggestive of direction of inquiry: experience having shown that
inquiry directed by a wrong theory has led to more good than inquiry without any theory at all. All this A. B. has fully set forth, in several pages. On it the reviewer remarks that "with infinite satisfaction he tries to justify his view of the case by urging that there is no other way of accounting for it; after the fashion of the philosophers of our own day, who conclude that certain flints found in the drift are the work of men, because the geologist does not see what else they can be." After this twist of meaning, the reviewer proceeds to say, and A. B. would certainly join him, "There is no need to combat any such mode of reasoning as this, because it would apply with equal force and justice to any theory whatever, however fantastic, profane, or silly." And so, having shown how the reviewer has hung himself, I leave him funipendulous.
One instance more, and I have done. A reviewer, not theological, speaking of the common argument that things which are derided are not therefore to be rejected, writes as follows:—"It might as well be said that they who laughed at Jenner[[349]] and vaccination were, in a certain but very unsatisfactory way, witnesses to the possible excellence of the system of St. John Long."[[350]] Of course it might: and of course it is said by all people of common sense. In introducing the word "possible," the reviewer has hit the point: I suspect that this word was introduced during revision, to put the sentence into fighting order; hurry preventing it being seen that the sentence was thus made to fight on the wrong side. Jenner, who was laughed at, was right; therefore, it is not impossible—that is, it is possible—that a derided system may be right. Mark the three gradations: in medio tutissimus ibis.[[351]]