truth is that, as of old, 'many men talk of Robin Hood who never shot
in his bow'; and many talk of Bacon who never discovered a law by
induction since they were born. As far as our experience goes, those
who are loudest in their jubilations over the wonderful progress of
the age are those who have never helped that progress forward one
inch, but find it a great deal easier and more profitable to use the
results which humbler men have painfully worked out as second-hand
capital for hustings-speeches and railway books, and flatter a
mechanics' institute of self-satisfied youths by telling them that
the least instructed of them is wiser than Erigena or Roger Bacon.
Let them be. They have their reward. And so also has the patient
and humble man of science, who, the more he knows, confesses the more
how little he knows, and looks back with affectionate reverence on
the great men of old time--on Archimedes and Ptolemy, Aristotle and
Pliny, and many another honourable man who, walking in great
darkness, sought a ray of light, and did not seek in vain,--as
integral parts of that golden chain of which he is but one link more;
as scientific forefathers, without whose aid his science could not
have had a being.

Meanwhile, this general tone of irreverence for our forefathers is no
hopeful sign. It is unwise to 'inquire why the former times were
better than these'; to hang lazily and weakly over some eclectic
dream of a past golden age; for to do so is to deny that God is
working in this age, as well as in past ages; that His light is as
near us now as it was to the worthies of old time.

But it is more than unwise to boast and rejoice that the former times
were worse than these; and to teach young people to say in their
hearts, 'What clever fellows we are, compared with our stupid old