I then, in a few dexterously involved sentences, allowed the plan of
my newly-invented theory to appear--so much of it, that is, as would
leave Hohenfels completely in the dark, and detract in no wise from
the splendor of my Opus when it should be published. As science,
however, truly considered, is the art of dilapidating and merging into
confused ruin the theories of your predecessors, I was somewhat
more precise with the destructive than the constructive part of my plan.

"Geographical Science, I am prepared to show, is that which modern
learning alone has neglected, to the point of leaving its discoveries
stationary. It is not so with the more assiduously cultivated
branches. What change, what advance, in every other department of
culture! In geology, the ammonite of to-day was for Chalmers a parody
facetiously made by Nature in imitation of her living conchology, and
for Voltaire a pilgrim's cockle dropped in the passes of the Alps. In
medicine, what progress has been made since ague was compared to the
flutter of insects among the nerves, and good Mistress Dorothy Burton,
who died but in 1629, cured it by hanging a spider round the patient's
neck "in a nutshell lapped in silk"! In chemistry, what strides! In
astronomy, what perturbations and changes! In history, what do we not
owe to the amiable authors who, dipping their pens in whitewash, have
reversed the judgments of ages on Nero and Henry VIII.! In genealogy,
what thanks must we pay to Darwin! Geographical Science alone, stolid
in its insolent fixity, has not moved: the location of Thebes and
Memphis is what it was in the days of Cheops and Rameses. And so poor
in intellect are our professors of geodesic lore that London continues
to be, just as it always was, in latitude 51° 30' 48" N., longitude 0°
5' 38" W., while the observatory of Paris contentedly sits in latitude
48° 50' 12" N. and longitude 2° 20' 22-1/2" E. from the observatory