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 such of their conclusions as are safe for you;
and them we will advise you to believe. To the scientific man, on