6 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



never cease because it is due to incomplete mental development ; 

 but the best way to reduce it is to give young minds that educa- 

 tion which allows them the widest purview — not the education 

 which forces them to burrow for ever in the dark pits of a single 

 knowledge, but that which leads them to look out early from the 

 summit of things upon the whole universe. In that way only 

 shall they learn how to avoid the life of the frog in the well, and 

 rather to view, like eagles, the true width of the world in which 

 they live. 



In the meantime we should clearly understand that irra- 

 tionalism is due to a natural defect in the mind, amounting 

 sometimes almost to insanity. It is a defect of the reason 

 comparable to that defect of the vision which we call colour- 

 blindness ; but while colour-blindness is admitted by those 

 who suffer from it, because it does not affect their reasoning 

 powers (as, for example, in the distinguished case of Dalton), 

 those who suffer from reason-blindness are unable, from the 

 very deformity which afflicts them, to recognise their deficiency. 

 They therefore pursue their fad at all costs, whatever mischief 

 they may inflict by their efforts upon humanity or upon 

 individuals. And we see innumerable examples of this in our 

 present state of civilisation — anti-vaccination, anti-vivisection, 

 militant suffragism, anarchism, and nihilism are some of them. 

 It is a difficult question to know what to do with these forms 

 of semi-insanity. There is one way in which the press could 

 help towards disarming them — simply by placing their propa- 

 gandists on the same level as personalities, indecencies, and 

 libels, and by refusing to publish them. We think, however, 

 that the time has come when a more organised campaign should 

 be conducted against them by bringing certain forms of them 

 within the action of well-considered laws. 



