_Reviewer._--If a system be derided, it is no ground of suspense that derided systems have turned out true: if it were, you would suspend your opinion about St. John Long on account of Jenner.--_Ans._ You ought to do so, as to _possibility_; and _before examination_; not with the notion that J. proves St. J. _probable_; only _possible_. _Common Sense._--The past emergence of truths out of derided systems proves that there is a practical certainty of like occurrence to come. But, inasmuch as a hundred speculative fooleries are started for one truth, the mind is permitted to approach the examination of any one given novelty with a bias against it of a hundred to one: and this permission is given because so it will be, leave or no leave. Every one has licence not to jump over the moon. _Paradoxer._--Great men have been derided, and I am derided: which proves that my system ought to be adopted. This is a summary of all the degrees in which paradoxers contend for the former derision of truths now established, giving their systems _probability_. I annex a paragraph which D [e &c.] inserted in the _Athenaeum_ of October 23, 1847. "_Discoverers and Discoveries._ "Aristotle once sent his servant to the cellar to fetch wine:--and the fellow brought him back small beer. The Stagirite (who knew the difference) called him a blockhead. 'Sir,' said the man, 'all I can say is, that I found it in the cellar.' The philosopher muttered to himself that an affirmative conclusion could not be proved in the second figure,--and Mrs. Aristotle, who was by, was not less effective in her remark, that small beer was not wine because it was in the same cellar. Both were right enough: and our philosophers might take a lesson from either--for they insinuate an affirmative conclusion in the second figure. Great discoverers have been little valued by established {207} schools,--and they are little valued. The results of true science are strange at first,--and so are their's. Many great men have opposed existing notions,--and so do they. All great men were obscure at first,--and they are obscure. Thinking men doubt,--and they doubt. Their small beer, I grant, has come out of the same cellar as the wine; but this is not enough. If they had let it stand awhile in the old wine-casks, it might have imbibed a little of the flavor."