ust that every scientific man in this room will agree with me, that
the imaginary squire or ploughman would have been conducting his
investigation strictly according to the laws of the Baconian philosophy.
You will remark, meanwhile, that he has not used a single scientific
term, or referred to a single scientific investigation; and has observed
nothing and thought nothing which might not have been observed and
thought by any one who chose to use his common sense, and not to be
afraid.

But because he has come round, after all this further investigation, to
something very like his first conclusion, was all that further
investigation useless? No--a thousand times, no. It is this very
verification of hypotheses which makes the sound ones safe, and destroys
the unsound. It is this struggle with all sorts of superstitions which
makes science strong and sure, and her march irresistible, winning ground
slowly, but never receding from it. It is this buffeting of adversity
which compels her not to rest dangerously upon the shallow sand of first
guesses, and single observations; but to strike her roots down, deep,
wide, and interlaced into the solid ground of actual facts.

It is very necessary to insist on this point. For there have been men in
all past ages--I do not say whether there are any such now, but I am
inclined to think that there will be hereafter--men who have tried to
represent scientific method as something difficult, mysterious, peculiar,
unique, not to be attained by the unscientific mass; and this not for the
purpose of exalting science, but rather of discrediting her. For as long
as the masses, educated or uneducated, are ignorant of what scientific
method is, they will look on scientific men, as the middle age looked on
necromancers, as a privileged, but awful and uncanny caste, possessed of
mighty secrets; who may do them great good, but may also do them great
harm.

Which belief on the part of the masses will enable these persons to
instal themselves as the critics of science, though not scientific men
themselves: and--as Shakespeare has it--to talk of Robin Hood, though
they never shot in his bow. Thus they become mediators to the masses
between the scientific and the unscientific worlds. They tell them--You
are not to trust the conclusions of men of science at first hand. You
are not fit judges of their facts or of their methods. It is we who
will, by a cautious eclecticism, choose out for you