Robert Chambers

We may, indeed, set it down as an absolute certainty, that many things are erroneously deemed impossible; for, till we know all the possible—and how far we are from that need not be insisted on—how can we know what is impossible?

are almost invariably gratuitous and unproved. Were they always put to the test of experiment, how many might prove like meteorites and vaccination?

Jenner's statue in Trafalgar Square tells us how fallacious the objection would have been.

many Gloucestershire peasantry having attested the prevention of small-pox by a virus from the teats of a cow

But what is this but to say that facts by themselves, however well attested, are wholly useless in such circumstances to the cultivators of physical science, while any kind of vague hypothesis can be brought forward in opposition to them? …

After two thousand years of incredulity, the truth in this matter was forced upon the scientific world about the beginning of the present century.

A committee of the French Academy of Sciences, including the celebrated Lavoisier, unanimously rejected an account of three nearly contemporary descents of meteorites

The fall of meteoric stones was occasionally reported by good witnesses during many ages. But science did not understand how stones should be formed in or beyond the atmosphere

This skeptical method consists very much in vicious circles. You cannot know whether a fact be a fact till you have ascertained the laws of nature in the case, and you cannot know the laws of nature till you have ascertained facts.

The skeptical view appears to me out of harmony with the inductive philosophy.

Just suppose for a moment that every fact reported to us by others were viewed in the light of the skeptical system, as to the fallaciousness of the senses and the tendency to self-deception. Should we not from that moment be at a …

There is of course no extraordinary fact resting on testimony only, of which it is not possible to presume some error in the observation or reporting, if we be set upon finding one.

The progress of knowledge is very irregular, somewhat resembling the movements of an army, of which some battalions are in vigorous health, while others are sickly or overburdened with baggage. The experimental marches on at a good pace; …

The rise of each generation gives new ties towards the future, which insensibly dissolves those which bind us to the past; and the natural old age of the human race seems to have adjusted itself to that period beyond which the human being …

should he—however meritorious his services, however honored his gray hairs—too long remain an actual living man, seeming to fill a part of the arena in which younger and abler combatants are looking for places, the consciousness of being …

has had some years of quiet meditation

At this age the great desires of life are generally accomplished, and the tired laborer in the hardest fields of exertion

It is desirable that the practical views entertained by sanitary reformers should be kept widely distinct from any such theories, the character of which has been well drawn by Malthus

It has been among the visions of some dreaming philosophers that human life is capable of almost indefinite extension. The great Condorcet was one of these.

to discipline the youthful and fiery spirits who, confident in their ignorance, plunge themselves and those depending on their exertions into ruin.

The working-classes require leaders and wise heads from their own body

The facts, indeed, connected with this gloomy department of statistics show that the most valuable period of human life—that in which a man is producing more than he is consuming—is that which provides the greatest number of victims.

Abstract perfection should always be the direction aimed at by human efforts, however imperfect they may be; and the success of sanitary legislation will be indicated by the nearness or the distance of its actual practice from this perfect …

Indifference to life and indifference to the purity and amenity that sweeten existence must necessarily go together.