The Dogmatism of Science Page 4

comprehension with much greater force than to minds educated on rigid lines of thought, as is the mind of the physicist. Such minds, says Hovenden, from the necessities of the case, are the least capable of solving a problem which can only be solved by views that are foreign to the fundamental ideas in which the physicist has been educated.

The distinguished men of science, Profs. Leidy, Brinton and Koenig, who investigated Keely's work in 1889-90, testing the current of force produced with the most sensitive galvanometer of the University of Pennsylvania, publicly asserted that it was free of electricity, magnetism or any known force - scoffing at the less than schoolboy knowledge, which had, in 1876, pronounced it to be compressed air.

Ricarde-Seaver, an European electrician, who, after investigating, returned to London and gave testimony in favor of the discoverer, was asked to withdraw his name, when the balloting was about to take place for membership at the Athenæum Club, by the very man of science¹ who had proposed him sixteen years before, the only reason given being his espousal of Keely's claims as a discoverer.

Such an experience (and more notably the recent experience of Prof. Oliver J. Lodge) proves that the founder of new systems must look to the power of the press, which is greater than that of the sword, when help is needed in making known to the world the importance of newly-discovered truths not accepted in general by those whose canons they controvert.

One of the most widely-known English physicists,² who for more than ten years has followed Keely's progress in his experimental researches, when asked in 1891 why he was not willing to make public his views of their nature, replied: "If I am called before a bar of justice to give testimony, I am cross-questioned by judge and counsel. It is the same at the bar of science. I cannot say what I think. I must say what I know, what I believe, what I have seen."

¹ Lord Kelvin.
² Prof. Dewar, of The Royal Institution of Great Britain.