5 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



1. The fact that success, even with the most richly-endowed natures, 

 is only possible through specialism. 



2. The imperfections and uncertainties of memory. 



3. The exceedingly narrow limitations of the senses. 



4. The fact that the best results of cerebral activity are largely in- 

 voluntary, if not unconscious. 



Specialism is not peculiar, as some would believe, to modern science 

 or recent civilization ; all the famous Greeks were specialists : one could 

 not conceive of a Socrates, Homer, Phidias, Pericles, Demosthenes, and 

 Sophocles, combined in a single individual. Although poetry and 

 philosophy, being nearly allied, have been the twin products of one 

 superlatively endowed intellect although Goethe has demonstrated the 

 possibility of uniting the genius of song with the genius of speculative 

 science yet no human being as yet proved himself at once great in 

 poetry and mathematics. The combination of a Newton and Milton 

 seems impossible ; a conclusive and crushing deductive argument against 

 the theory of the Baconian origin of Shakespeare's plays is, that no 

 single brain could have produced the " Novum Organum " and " Ham- 

 let." 



In the present century, science has become so specialized that all 

 the advances are made by specialists in comparatively restricted fields, 

 by men whose entire energies are concentrated for a lifetime in some 

 single path of research beyond which they never wander, and in which 

 alone they are accepted as guides. So universal is this law of special- 

 ism that the instincts of men regard with suspicion any one who at- 

 tempts to become an authority on more than one branch of science, while 

 literature is so split up into divisions and subdivisions that eminence in 

 all is unattainable. The lopping away of all superfluous branches, that 

 bearing boughs may live, is carried to such an extreme that only one 

 branch remains, and through this the whole cerebral force circulates. 

 The human mind is like a stream which carries along the same amount 

 of water, whether it flows through one channel or many. In spite of 

 all the criticisms of specialism and specialists, the work of specialization 

 has gone on, and in obedience to the law of evolution must yet go on ; 

 specialists are our sole authorities, even among those who despise them : 



in certain grooves, as it were, the result is more rapid succession. Thus one student was 

 able to think in a minute of thirty different kinds of actions, forty-six animals, fifty places 

 or fifty persons. I can myself think, without much effort, of thirty-two animals or forty 

 places or persons, in a minute. Even in these cases, however, it will be found that the 

 rapidity greatly depends upon the degree in which the objects have been associated. 

 When thoughts have been very closely and frequently linked together, the number of 

 which may be compressed within a minute is much greater. I find that I can count about 

 ninety-six in half a minute, which, without allowing for the two places of figures, gives 

 one hundred and ninety-two thoughts per minute. I can think of every letter in the 

 alphabet in five seconds at most, which is at the rate of more than three hundred per 

 minute. Finally, by counting the first ten numbers over and over again, I have com- 

 pressed nearly four hundred changes of idea within the minute.' " 



