e aspects of
the two bodies would remain unchanged. He sent
his views to the Times. He appealed to the common
sense of the world, and common sense seemed to be
on his side. The men of science were of course right;
but a phenomenon, not entirely obvious, had been
hitherto explained in language which the general reader
could not readily comprehend. A few words of elucidation
cleared up the confusion: we do not recollect whether
Mr. Symonds was satisfied or not; but most of us who
had before received what the men of science told us
with an unintelligent and languid assent, were
set thinking for ourselves, and as a result of the
discussion, exchanged a confused idea for a clear one.

It was an excellent illustration of the true claims
of authority and of the value of open inquiry. The
ignorant man has not as good a right to his own opinion
as the instructed man. The instructed man, however
right he may be, must not deliver his conclusions as
axioms, and merely insist that they are true. The one
asks a question, the other answers it, and all of us are
the better for the business.

Now let us suppose the same thing to have happened,
when the only reply to a difficulty was an appeal to the
Astronomer Royal, where the rotation of the moon was
an article of salvation decreed by the law of the land,
and where all persons admitted to hold office under the
State were required to subscribe to it. The Astronomer
Royal--as it was, if we remember right, he was a little
cross about it--would have brought an action against
Mr. Symonds in the Court of Arches; Mr. Symonds
would have been deprived of his inspectorship--for, of
course, he would have been obstinate in his heresy;
the world outside would have had an antecedent presumption
that truth lay with the man who was making
sacrifices for it, and that there was little to be said in
the way of argument for what could not stand without
the help of the law. Everybody could understand the
difficulty; not everybody would have taken the trouble
to attend to the answer. Mr. Symonds would have
been a Colenso, and a good many of us would have
been convinced in our secret hearts that the moon as
little turned on its axis as the drawing-room table.

As it is in idea essential to a reverence for truth to
believe in its capacity for self-defence, so practically in
every subject except one, errors are allowed free room
to express themselves, and that liberty of opinion which
is the life