And so, since
whichever way one turns, one is met with the same troubled sea of
speculation, margined by the treacherous quicksands of hypothesis, and
every horizon bounded by inferential landmarks inscribed with imaginary
dates. Again, the "Adepts" ask why should any one be awed into
accepting as final criterion that which passes for science of high
authority in Europe? For all this is known to the Asiatic scholar--in
every case save the purely mathematical and physical sciences--as little
better than a secret league for mutual support, and, perhaps,
admiration. He bows with profound respect before the Royal Societies of
Physicists, Chemists, and, to a degree, even of Naturalists. He refuses
to pay the slightest attention to the merely speculative and conjectural
so-called "sciences" of the modern Physiologist, Ethnologist,
Philologist, &c., and the mob of self-styling Oedipuses to whom it is
not given to unriddle the Sphynx of Nature, and who therefore throttle
her.
With an eye to the above, as also with a certain prevision of the
future, the defendants in the cases under examination believe that the
"historical difficulty" with reference to the non-historical statement,
necessitated more than a simple reaffirmation of the fact.
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