"In that branch of science, we are all Professors," I answered, to disarm his wrath; knowing that, in these riper years, honest indignation wrought upon his system, as youthful exultation once had done; and I could not afford to have a hole made in my ceiling. "However, Sir Thomas, I shall stick to my resolve. Though your life--when its largeness is seen aright--will be an honour to the history of our race, justice comes before honour; and only you can do justice to it." Humility, which competes with truth, for the foremost place in his character, compelled him to shake his head at this; and he began again, rather sadly. "My purpose is a larger one, than merely to talk of my own doings. I want to put common sense into plain English, and to show--as our medical men show daily--that the body is beyond the comprehension of the mind. The mind commands the body to lie down, and be poked at, and probed, and pried into, with fifty subtle instruments, or even to be cut up, and analysed alive; and then understands never the more of it. If the mind can learn nothing of the body it lives in, grows, rejoices, and suffers with, how can it know all about it, for millions of years before either existed? How can it trace their joint lineage up to a thing, that had neither a head, nor a body? "Go to; what I offer is not argument, but fact; and I care not the head of their ancestor for them. But if I write it, will you remove whatever may offend a candid mind?" "If you offend no mind but that," said I, being fresh from a sharp review of something I had written; "you will give small offence indeed; and to edit you will be a sinecure." Both these predictions have proved correct; except indeed that a few kind readers of sadly unscientific mind have hankered for some explanation of parts which they failed to witness. The reply is truly simple--"if you were not there the fault was yours; here are the facts as in evidence, better supported, and less strange, than those you accept without a wink; and perhaps your trouble in realising a case of specific levity proceeds from nothing but your own excessive specific gravity." R. D. BLACKMORE. 1885. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. SIGNS OF EMINENCE 1 II. _ITUR AD ASTRA_ 10 III. THE DAWN OF SCIENCE 16 IV. THE PURSUIT OF SCIENCE 25 V. "GRIP" 43 VI. TRUE SCIENCE 54 VII. THE GREAT WASHED 65 VIII. FOR CHANGE OF AIR 75 IX. _THALATTA!_ 86 X. THE NEW ADMIRAL 96 XI. LARGE IDEAS 106 XII. TWENTIFOLD TOWERS 119 XIII. WHALEBONES 131 XIV. A SILLY PAIR 145 XV. POLITICAL OECONOMY 156