I am a friend to all scientists and regard them as earnest workers seeking the truth. But they follow accepted and antiquated authority too closely, and thus "the blind lead the blind." They are too often one-sided and impracticable. Men who study apes and beetles or atoms and gases all their lives are no judges of angel's faces or of the scope and design of the universe. Prof. Proctor's testimony that "nine-tenths of the astronomers employ their powers in making observations at great pains and labor which are not worth the paper on which they are recorded," is a plain statement of their tendency to be cranky and impracticable.
Some are so one-sided they think mathematics is everything. Mathematics in its place, like the miser, is good to count gains after they are acquired; but had man relied on mathematics he would have remained as ignorant of the fundamental truths of the universe as the Blackfoot Indians. Newton owed none of his discoveries to mathematics. When his constructive imagination formulated a theory he tried to bolster it up with mathematics. But it generally proved as delusive as did his calculation that the sun was 1,669,300 degrees hot.
The great boast of the mathematicians is that Le Verrier calculated where Neptune was before it was discovered by Galle at Berlin, but the fact is he missed it eight astronomical units or over seven hundred millions of miles, and said Neptune was not the planet he was looking for.
These are two average tests of mathematical calculations, and they are on a par with the mis-calculations of how much the sun must burn up annually under the so-called laws of gravity to supply the necessary heat to the earth and planets.
Imagination—constructive ideality—is the highest gift of Deity to man, and the only faculty that can reason from the known to the unknown and comprehend the wonders and grandeur of the universe.
I am not a practical chemist seeking the mysteries of nature in the laboratory, nor a professional scientist exploring the fields of original research; but, like La Place, Comte, Herbert Spencer and others, I formulate my theories and scientific hypotheses from the latest and best established facts of science as I see it. Science is only unified or systematic knowledge. Every fact is a scientific fact, and every truth is a scientific truth whether it pertains to so-called science or to religion or philosophy. Nature has no subdivisions of science, religion or philosophy, nor astronomy, chemistry or geology; but all things are a unity, constituting one harmonious universe; and he who separates science from religion or either from philosophy goes contrary to nature and divides the universe into fractions. As I am not a member of any scientific or religious association, I have no prejudices to overcome and seek the truth only, without fear, favor or undue predilections. Old traditions, fossilized theories and antiquated authority have little weight in my mind by the side of recent facts. But I am not an iconoclast, for I am more anxious to build up than to tear down.
The professional scientists may deem such students of nature as myself who trespass upon their chosen domain as amateurs. If so, it is a proud distinction. Amateurs have accomplished nearly all the great things in the world's history. Cromwell was a farmer, Hastings and Clive were clerks, Bismarck twice failed in his examination to become a lawyer, Washington was a surveyor and Franklin a printer, Herschell was a musician, Faraday a bookbinder, Scott a lawyer's clerk, Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning machine, was a barber; Spinoza a glass-blower, Herbert Spencer an engineer, Edison a newsboy, and Stephenson, the inventor of the locomotive, an ordinary workman; Lincoln was a railsplitter, Grant a tanner, Andrew Johnson a tailor, Andrew Jackson a saddler, Vanderbilt a ferryman, Rothschild a peddler, Krupp a blacksmith, Paul a tent-maker, and Christ a carpenter. The names of distinguished amateurs could be continued indefinitely, but space forbids.
As I have discussed this question elsewhere and touched on it in other chapters, extended discussion might cause repetition. Besides, this volume is not intended for detail or abtruse minutiæ, but for the statement of leading facts for the masses of intelligent people, who abhor technical terms and dry details. Many people find scientific books so dry and unpalatable, that, like the weary listener to the dry, dull sermon of the missionary, who said:
"If I were a cannibal from Timbuctoo,
I would eat that missionary and his hymnbook too."