defend itself, though publicly attacked in
terms which might sting a pickpocket into standing up for his character:
science, in return, allows mankind to witness or not, at pleasure, that it
_does not_ defend itself, and yet receives no injury from centuries of
assault. Demonstrative reason never raises the cry of _Church in Danger_!
and it cannot have any Dictionary of Heresies except a Budget of Paradoxes.
Mistaken claimants are left to Time and his extinguisher, with the
approbation of all thinking non-claimants: there is no need of a succession
of exposures. Time gets through the job in his own workmanlike manner as
already described.

On looking back more than twenty years, I find among my cuttings the
following passage, relating to a person who had signalized himself by an
effort to teach comets to the conductor of the _Nautical Almanac_:

"Our brethren of the literary class have not the least idea of the small
amount of appearance of knowledge {356} which sets up the scientific
charlatan. Their world is large, and there are many who have that moderate
knowledge, and perception of what is knowledge, before which extreme
ignorance is detected in its first prank. There is a public of moderate
cultivation, for the most part sound in its judgment, always ready in its
decisions. Accordingly, all their successful pretenders have _some
pretension_. It is not so in science. Those who have a right to judge are
fewer and farther between. The consequence is, that many scientific
pretenders have _nothing but pretension_."

This is nearly as applicable now as then. It is impossible to make those
who have not studied for themselves fully aware of the truth of what I have
quoted. The best chance is collection of cases; in fact, a Budget of
Paradoxes. Those who have no knowledge of the subject can thus argue from
the seen to the unseen. All can feel the impracticability of the
Hubongramillposanfy numeration, and the absurdity of the equality of
contour of a regular pentagon and hexagon in one and the same circle. Many
may accordingly be satisfied, on the assurance of those who have studied,
that there is as much of impracticability, or as much of absurdity, in
things which are hidden under

"Sines, tangents, secants, radius, cosines
Subtangents, segments and all those signs;
Enough to prove that he who read 'em
Was just as mad as he who made 'em."

Not that I mean to be disrespectful to mathematical terms: the