Though every one knew the groundlessness of the claims continually set up by the Academy to be the encourager and promoter of unaided scientific genius; though every one knew that an outsider had no chance of admission to the guild unless he forcibly broke open its doors with the assistance of a powerful public; though every one knew that the Academy had left out in the cold, to perish of neglect and to gnaw their hearts in disappointment, many who had had no influential public to back them, but whose discoveries had been afterwards utilized to the great advantage of the community, and whose monuments decorated the public places, still such was the force of custom and the power of shams in Colymbia, that the merits of the Academy were almost universally acknowledged. Some few there were, but they took good care to give no public utterance to their heretical sentiments, who said that in place of Academy of Science it should be called Academy for the Retention of Things as they are and for the Obstruction of Advances in Science.
I suppose it is the dense medium in which they live that makes the Colymbians so fond of retaining the shadow after the substance has long passed away. Possibly in distant ages the Academy of Science merited its name, and acted really as a foster-mother to rising genius whom it sought out and introduced to the public. But if so, the actual character of the Academy differs vastly from its original one. The public are now the patrons of genius, and it is through the public alone that the Academy are brought to acknowledge scientific merit. Thus, just as the sovereign title remains in Colymbia long after the sovereign has ceased to exercise any power; just as a
