This has happened too often.  It is in the interest of superstition that it should happen again; and the best way to prevent it surely is to tell the masses—­Scientific method is no peculiar mystery, requiring a peculiar initiation.  It is simply common sense, combined with uncommon courage, which includes uncommon honesty and uncommon patience; and if you will be brave, honest, patient, and rational, you will need no mystagogues to tell you what in science to believe and what not to believe; for you will be just as good judges of scientific facts and theories as those who assume the right of guiding your convictions.  You are men and women:  and more than that you need not be.

And let me say that the man of our days whose writings exemplify most thoroughly what I am going to say is the justly revered Mr. Thomas Carlyle.

As far as I know he has never written on any scientific subject.  For aught I am aware of, he may know nothing of mathematics or chemistry, of comparative anatomy or geology.  For aught I am aware of, he may know a great deal about them all, and, like a wise man, hold his tongue, and give the world merely the results in the form of general thought.  But this I know; that his writings are instinct with the very spirit of science; that he has taught men, more than any living man, the meaning and end of science; that he has taught men moral and intellectual courage; to face facts boldly, while they confess the divineness of facts; not to be afraid of Nature, and not to worship nature; to believe that man can know truth; and that only in as far as he knows truth can he live worthily on this earth.  And thus he has vindicated, as no other man in our days has done, at once the dignity of Nature and the dignity of spirit.  That he would have made a distinguished scientific man, we may be as certain from his writings as we may be certain, when we see a fine old horse of a certain stamp, that he would have made a first-class hunter, though he has been unfortunately all his life in harness.  Therefore, did I try to train a young man of science to be true, devout, and earnest, accurate and daring, I should say—­Read what you will:  but at least read Carlyle.  It is a small matter to me—­and I doubt not to him—­whether you will agree with his special conclusions:  but his premises and his method are irrefragable; for they stand on the “voluntatem Dei in rebus revelatam”—­on fact and common sense.

And Mr. Carlyle’s writings, if I am correct in my estimate of them, will afford a very sufficient answer to those who think that the scientific habit of mind tends to irreverence.