"
"Ay," he said; "but if man were such a duplex being, it might be that
the wearing out of the body was necessary, and had been adapted to
release the soul when it had completed its appropriate term of service
in the flesh."
I could not answer this question, and he did not pursue the theme.
Presently I inquired, "If you allow no appeal to popular feeling or
passion, to what was I so nearly the victim? And what is the terrorism
that makes it dangerous to avow a credulity or incredulity opposed to
received opinion?"
"Scientific controversies," he replied, "enlist our strongest and
angriest feelings. It is held that only wickedness or lunacy can
resist the evidence that has convinced a vast majority. By
arithmetical calculation the chances that twelve men are wrong and
twelve thousand [11] right, on a matter of inductive or deductive
proof, are found to amount to what must be taken for practical
certainty; and when the twelve still hold out, they are regarded as
madmen or knaves, and treated accordingly by their fellows. If it be
thought desirable to invoke a legal settlement of the issue, a council
of all the overseers of our scientific colleges is called, and its
decision is by law irrevocable and infallible, especially if ratified
by the popular voice.
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