Experts in biology will be apt to receive with some skepticism the
announcement of Dr. Jacques Loeb of the University of California as to
the creation of life by chemical agencies.... Doctor Loeb is a very
bright and ingenious experimenter, but _a consensus of opinion among
biologists_ would show that he is voted rather as a man of lively
imagination than an inerrant investigator of natural phenomena.--New
York _Times_, March 2d.
I wish I could be as young as that again. Although I seem so old, now, I
was once as young as that. I remember, as if it were but thirty or forty
years ago, how a paralyzing Consensus of Opinion accumulated from
Experts a-setting around, about brother experts who had patiently and
laboriously cold-chiseled their way into one or another of nature’s
safe-deposit vaults and were reporting that they had found something
valuable was a plenty for me. It settled it.
But it isn’t so now--no. Because, in the drift of the years I by and by
found out that a Consensus examines a new thing with its feelings rather
oftener than with its mind. You know, yourself, that that is so. Do
those people examine with feelings that are friendly to evidence? You
know they don’t. It is the other way about. They do the examining by the
light of their prejudices--now isn’t that true?
With curious results, yes. So curious that you wonder the Consensuses do
not go out of the business. Do you know of a case where a Consensus won
a game? You can go back as far as you want to and you will find history
furnishing you this (until now) unwritten maxim for your guidance and
profit: Whatever new thing a Consensus coppers (colloquial for “bets
against”), bet your money on that very card and do not be afraid.
There was that primitive steam engine--ages back, in Greek times: a
Consensus made fun of it. There was the Marquis of Worcester’s steam
engine, 250 years ago: a Consensus made fun of it. There was Fulton’s
steamboat of a century ago: a French Consensus, including the Great
Napoleon, made fun of it. There was Priestly, with his oxygen: a
Consensus scoffed at him, mobbed him, burned him out, banished him.
While a Consensus was proving, by statistics and things, that a
steamship could not cross the Atlantic, a steamship did it. A Consensus
consisting of all the medical experts in Great Britain made fun of
Jenner and inoculation. A Consensus consisting of all the medical
experts in France made fun of the stethoscope. A Consensus of all the
medical experts in Germany made fun of that young doctor (his name?
forgotten by all but doctors, now, revered now by doctors alone) who
discovered and abolished the cause of that awful disease, puerperal
fever; made fun of him, reviled him, hunted him, persecuted him, broke
his heart, killed him. Electric telegraph, Atlantic cable, telephone,
all “toys,” and of no practical value--verdict of the Consensuses.
Geology, palæontology, evolution--all brushed into space by a Consensus
of theological experts, comprising all the preachers in Christendom,
assisted by the Duke of Argyle and (at first) the other scientists. And
do look at Pasteur and his majestic honor roll of prodigious
benefactions! Damned--each and every one of them in its turn--by
frenzied and ferocious Consensuses of medical and chemical Experts
comprising, for years, every member of the tribe in Europe; damned
without even a casual _look_ at what he was doing--and he pathetically
imploring them to come and take at least one little look before making
the damnation eternal. They shortened his life by their malignities and
persecutions; and thus robbed the world of the further and priceless
services of a man who--along certain lines and within certain
limits--had done more for the human race than any other one man in all
its long history: a man whom it had taken the Expert brotherhood ten
thousand years to produce, and whose mate and match the brotherhood may
possibly not be able to bring forth and assassinate in another ten
thousand. The preacher has an old and tough reputation for bull-headed
and unreasoning hostility to new light; why, he is not “in it” with the
doctor! Nor, perhaps, with some of the other breeds of Experts that sit
around and get up the Consensuses and squelch the new things as fast as
they come from the hands of the plodders, the searchers, the inspired
dreamers, the Pasteurs that come bearing pearls to scatter in the
Consensus sty.
This is warm work! It puts my temperature up to 106 and raises my pulse
to the limit. It always works just so when the red rag of a Consensus
jumps my fence and starts across my pasture. I have been a Consensus
more than once myself, and I know the business--and its vicissitudes. I
am a compositor-expert, of old and seasoned experience; nineteen years
ago I delivered the final-and-for-good verdict that the linotype would
never be able to earn its own living nor anyone else’s: it takes
fourteen acres of ground, now, to accommodate its factories in England.
Thirty-five years ago I was an expert precious-metal quartz-miner. There
was an outcrop in my neighborhood that assayed $600 a ton--gold. But
every fleck of gold in it was shut up tight and fast in an intractable
and impersuadable base-metal shell. Acting as a Consensus, I delivered
the finality verdict that no human ingenuity would ever be able to set
free two dollars’ worth of gold out of a ton of that rock. The fact is,
I did not foresee the cyanide process. Indeed, I have been a Consensus
ever so many times since I reached maturity and approached the age of
discretion, but I call to mind no instance in which I won out.
These sorrows have made me suspicious of Consensuses. Do you know, I
tremble and the goose flesh rises on my skin every time I encounter one,
now. I sheer warily off and get behind something, saying to myself, “It
looks innocent and all right, but no matter, ten to one there’s a
cyanide process under that thing somewhere.”
Now as concerns this “creation of life by chemical agencies.” Reader,
take my advice: don’t you copper it. I don’t say bet on it; no, I only
say, don’t you copper it. As you see, there is a Consensus out against
it. If you find that you can’t control your passions; if you feel that
you have _got_ to copper something and can’t help it, copper the
Consensus. It is the safest way--all history confirms it. If you are
young, you will, of course, have to put up, on one side or the other,
for you will not be able to restrain yourself; but as for me, I am old,
and I am going to wait for a new deal.
_P.S._--In the same number of the _Times_ Doctor Funk says: “Man may be
as badly fooled by believing too little as by believing too much; the
hard-headed skeptic Thomas was the only disciple who was cheated.” Is
that the right and rational way to look at it? I will not be sure, for
my memory is faulty, but it has always been my impression that Thomas
was the only one who made an examination and proved a fact, while the
others were accepting, or discounting, the fact on trust--like any other
Consensus. If that is so, Doubting Thomas removed a doubt which must
otherwise have confused and troubled the world until now. Including
Doctor Funk. It seems to me that we owe that hard-headed--or
sound-headed--witness something more than a slur. Why does Doctor Funk
_examine_ into spiritism, and then throw stones at Thomas. Why doesn’t
he take it on trust? Has inconsistency become a jewel in Lafayette
Place?