The rapid increase of natural knowledge, which is the chief
characteristic of our age, is effected in various ways. The main army of
science moves to the conquest of new worlds slowly and surely, nor ever
cedes an inch of the territory gained. But the advance is covered and
facilitated by the ceaseless activity of clouds of light troops provided
with a weapon--always efficient, if not always an arm of precision--the
scientific imagination. It is the business of these _enfants perdus_ of
science to make raids into the realm of ignorance wherever they see, or
think they see, a chance; and cheerfully to accept defeat, or it may be
annihilation, as the reward of error. Unfortunately the public, which
watches the progress of the campaign, too often mistakes a dashing
incursion of the Uhlans for a forward movement of the main body; fondly
imagining that the strategic movement to the rear, which occasionally
follows, indicates a battle lost by science. And it must be
confessed that the error is too often justified by the effects of the
irrepressible tendency which men of science share with all other sorts
of men known to me, to be impatient of that most wholesome state of
mind--suspended judgment; to assume the objective truth of speculations
which, from the nature of the evidence in their favour, can have no
claim to be more than working hypotheses.
The history of the "Aryan question" affords a striking illustration of
these general remarks.