outer world which makes élite of them. I have done such a thing as serve on a committee of the Society, and report on a paper: they had the sense to ask, and I had the sense to see that none of my opinions were compromised by compliance. And I will be of any use which does not involve the status of homo trium literarum; as I have elsewhere explained, I would gladly be Fautor Realis Scientiæ, but I would not be taken for Falsæ Rationis Sacerdos.
Nothing worse will ever happen to me than the smile which individuals bestow on a man who does not groove. Wisdom, like religion, belongs to majorities; who can wonder that it should be so thought, when it is so clearly pictured in the New Testament from one end to the other?
The counterpart of paradox, the isolated opinion of one or of few, is the general opinion held by all the rest; and the counterpart of false and absurd paradox is what is called the 'vulgar error,' the pseudodox. There is one great work on this last subject, the Pseudodoxia Epidemica of Sir Thomas Browne, the famous author of the Religio Medici; it usually goes by the name of Browne 'On Vulgar Errors' (1st ed. 1646; 6th, 1672). A careful analysis of this work would show that vulgar errors are frequently opposed by scientific errors; but good sense is always good sense, and Browne's book has a vast quantity of it.
As an example of bad philosophy brought against bad observation. The Amphisbæna serpent was supposed to have two heads, one at each end; partly from its shape, partly because it runs backwards as well as forwards. On this Sir Thomas Browne makes the following remarks:—
And were there any such species or natural kind of animal, it would be hard to make good those six positions of body which, according to the three dimensions, are ascribed unto every Animal; that is, infra, supra, ante, retro, dextrosum, sinistrosum: for if (as it is determined) that be the anterior and upper part wherein the senses are placed, and that the posterior and lower part which is opposite thereunto, there is no inferior or former part in this Animal; for the senses, being placed at both extreams, doth make both ends anterior, which is impossible; the terms being Relative, which mutually subsist, and are not without each other. And therefore this duplicity was ill contrived to place one head at both extreams, and had been more tolerable to have settled three or four at one. And therefore also Poets have been more reasonable than Philosophers, and Geryon or Cerberus less monstrous than Amphisbæna.
There may be paradox upon paradox: and there is a good instance in the eighth century in the case of Virgil, an Irishman,
