.' He appealed to the common
sense of the world, and common sense seemed to be on his side. The men
of science were of course right; but a phenomenon, not entirely obvious,
had been hitherto explained in language which the general reader could
not readily comprehend. A few words of elucidation cleared up the
confusion. We do not recollect whether Mr. Symonds was satisfied or not;
but most of us who had before received what the men of science told us
with an unintelligent and languid assent, were set thinking for
ourselves, and, as a result of the discussion, exchanged a confused idea
for a clear one.

It was an excellent illustration of the true claims of authority and of
the value of open enquiry. The ignorant man has not as good a right to
his own opinion as the instructed man. The instructed man, however
right he may be, must not deliver his conclusions as axioms, and merely
insist that they are true. The one asks a question, the other answers
it, and all of us are the better for the business.

Now, let us suppose the same thing to have happened when the only reply
to a difficulty was an appeal to the Astronomer-Royal, where the
rotation of the moon was an article of salvation decreed by the law of
the land, and where all persons admitted to hold office under the State
were required to subscribe to it. The Astronomer-Royal--as it was, if we
remember right, he was a little cross at Mr. Symond's presumption--would
have brought an action against him in the Court of Arches; Mr. Symonds
would have been deprived of his inspectorship--for, of course, he would
have been obstinate in his heresy; the world outside would have had an
antecedent presumption that truth lay with the man who was making
sacrifices for it, and that there was little to be said in the way of
argument for what could not stand without the help of the law. Everybody
could understand the difficulty; not everybody would have taken the
trouble to attend to the answer. Mr. Symonds would have been a Colenso,
and a good many of us would have been convinced in our secret hearts
that the moon as little turned on its axis as the drawing-room table.

As it is in idea essential to a reverence for truth to believe in its
capacity for self-defence, so practically, in every subject except one,
errors are allowed free room to express themselves, and the liberty of
opinion which is the life of knowledge, as surely becomes the death of
falsehood. A method--the soundness