rule everywhere in the world: it is always at hand and busily engaged in
trying to improve in its own way upon the mature deliberations of the
thinkers. So that if a man wishes to improve himself in any subject he
must guard against immediately seizing the newest books written upon it,
in the assumption that science is always advancing and that the older
books have been made use of in the compiling of the new. They have, it
is true, been used; but how? The writer often does not thoroughly
understand the old books; he will, at the same time, not use their exact
words, so that the result is he spoils and bungles what has been said in
a much better and clearer way by the old writers; since they wrote from
their own lively knowledge of the subject. He often leaves out the best
things they have written, their most striking elucidations of the
matter, their happiest remarks, because he does not recognise their
value or feel how pregnant they are. It is only what is stupid and
shallow that appeals to him. An old and excellent book is frequently
shelved for new and bad ones; which, written for the sake of money, wear
a pretentious air and are much eulogised by the authors' friends. In
science, a man who wishes to distinguish himself brings something new to
market; this frequently consists in his denouncing some principle that
has been previously held as correct, so that he may establish a wrong
one of his own. Sometimes his attempt is successful for a short time,
when a return is made to the old and correct doctrine. These innovators
are serious about nothing else in the world than their own priceless
person, and it is this that they wish to make its mark. They bring this
quickly about by beginning a paradox; the sterility of their own heads
suggests their taking the path of negation; and truths that have long
been recognised are now denied--for instance, the vital power, the
sympathetic nervous system, _generatio equivoca_, Bichat's distinction
between the working of the passions and the working of intelligence, or
they return to crass atomism, etc., etc. Hence _the course of science is