ny use
which does not involve the status of _homo trium literarum_; as I have
elsewhere explained, I would gladly be _Fautor Realis Scientiae_, but I
would not be taken for _Falsae Rationis Sacerdos_.

Nothing worse will ever happen to me than the smile which individuals
bestow on a man who does not _groove_. Wisdom, like religion, belongs to
majorities; who can {31} wonder that it should be so thought, when it is so
clearly pictured in the New Testament from one end to the other?

The counterpart of _paradox_, the isolated opinion of one or of few, is the
general opinion held by all the rest; and the counterpart of false and
absurd paradox is what is called the "vulgar error," the _pseudodox_. There
is one great work on this last subject, the _Pseudodoxia Epidemica_ of Sir
Thomas Browne, the famous author of the _Religio Medici_; it usually goes
by the name of Browne "On Vulgar Errors" (1st ed. 1646; 6th, 1672). A
careful analysis of this work would show that vulgar errors are frequently
opposed by scientific errors; but good sense is always good sense, and
Browne's book has a vast quantity of it.

As an example of bad philosophy brought against bad observation. The
Amphisbaena serpent was supposed to have two heads, one at each end; partly
from its shape, partly because it runs backwards as well as forwards. On
this Sir Thomas Browne makes the following remarks:

"And were there any such species or natural kind of animal, it would be
hard to make good those six positions of body which, according to the three
dimensions, are ascribed unto every Animal; that is, _infra_, _supra_,
_ante_, _retro_, _dextrosum_, _sinistrosum_: for if (as it is determined)
that be the anterior and upper part wherein the senses are placed, and that
the posterior and lower part which is opposite thereunto, there is no
inferior or former part in this Animal; for the senses, being placed at
both extreams, doth make both ends anterior, which is impossible; the terms
being Relative, which mutually subsist, and are not without each other. And
therefore this duplicity was ill contrived to place one head at both
extreams, and had been more tolerable to have settled three or four at one.
And therefore also Poets have been more reasonable than Philosophers, and
_Geryon_ or _Cerberus_ less monstrous than _Amphisbaena_." {32}

There may be paradox upon paradox: and there is a good instance in the
eighth century in the case of Virgil, an Irishman, Bis