They knew
that with no better claims to a hearing than may be accorded by the
confidence of a few, and in view of the decided antagonism of the many,
it would never do for them to say "we maintain" while Western professors
maintained to the contrary. For a body of, so to say, unlicensed
preachers and students of unauthorized and unrecognized sciences to
offer to fight an August body of universally recognized oracles, would
be an unprecedented piece of impertinence. Hence their respective
claims had to be examined on however small a scale to begin with (in
this as in all other cases) on other than psychological grounds. The
"Adepts" in Occult Arts had better keep silence when confronted with the
"A.C.S.'s"--Adepts in Conjectural Sciences--unless they could show,
partially at least, how weak is the authority of the latter and on what
foundations of shifting sands their scientific dicta are often built.
They may thus make it a thinkable conjecture that the former may be
right after all. Absolute silence, moreover, as at present advised,
would have been fatal.
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