open; "science" herself is subject to criticism; and new
materials, accruing yearly, forbid a tame acquiescence in hasty
theories.

May I say a word to the lovers of poetry who, in reading Homer,
feel no more doubt than in reading Milton that, on the whole, they
are studying a work of one age, by one author? Do not let them be
driven from their natural impression by the statement that Science
has decided against them. The certainties of the exact sciences
are one thing: the opinions of Homeric commentators are other and
very different things. Among all the branches of knowledge which
the Homeric critic should have at his command, only philology,
archaeology, and anthropology can be called "sciences"; and they
are not exact sciences: they are but skirmishing advances towards
the true solution of problems prehistoric and "proto-historic."

Our knowledge shifts from day to day; on every hand, in regard to
almost every topic discussed, we find conflict of opinions. There
is no certain scientific decision, but there is the possibility of
working in the scientific spirit, with breadth of comparison;
consistency of logic; economy of conjecture; abstinence from the
piling of hypothesis on hypothesis.

Nothing can be more hurtful to science than the dogmatic
assumption that the hypothesis most in fashion is scientific.

Twenty years ago, the philological theory of the Solar Myth was
preached as "scientific" in the books, primers, and lectures of
popular science. To-day its place knows it no more. The separatist
theories of the Homeric poems are not more secure than the Solar