The progress of science was
measured by the success of the "Grammar," when, for twenty years
past, Stallo had been deliberately ignored under the usual
conspiracy of silence inevitable to all thought which demands new
thought-machinery. Science needs time to reconstruct its
instruments, to follow a revolution in space; a certain lag is
inevitable; the most active mind cannot instantly swerve from its
path; but such revolutions are portentous, and the fall or rise
of half-a-dozen empires interested a student of history less than
the rise of the "Grammar of Science," the more pressingly
because, under the silent influence of Langley, he was prepared
to expect it.
For a number of years Langley had published in his Smithsonian
Reports the revolutionary papers that foretold the overthrow of
nineteenth-century dogma, and among the first was the famous
address of Sir William Crookes on psychical research, followed by
a series of papers on Roentgen and Curie, which had steadily
driven the scientific lawgivers of Unity into the open; but Karl
Pearson was the first to pen them up for slaughter in the
schools. The phrase is not stronger than that with which the
"Grammar of Science" challenged the fight: "Anything more
hopelessly illogical than the statements with regard to Force and
Matter current in elementary textbooks of science, it is
difficult to imagine," opened Mr.
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