lion THE GENESIS OF SPECIES [Chap. 



interest in jurispiudence, or a prizefighter avIio is an acute 

 metaphysician. Nay, more than this, a positive tendency 

 may be developed, whicli, in the intellectual order, may 

 result in a spontaneous and unreasoning disbelief in what- 

 ever appears at first sight to be in opposition to the more 

 familiar concept. It has been aptly said " that past ages 

 were pre-eminently credulous as compared with our own, 

 yet the difference is not so much in the amount of the 

 credulity as in the direction which it takes." ^ 



Dr. Xewman observes : " Any one study, of whatever 

 kind, exclusively pursued, deadens in the mind the interest, 

 nay the perception of any other. Thus, Cicero says that 

 riato and Demosthenes, Aristotle and Isocrates, might have 

 respectively excelled in each other's province, but that 

 each was absorbed in his own. Specimens of this peculi- 

 arity occur every day. You can hardly persuade some men 

 to talk about anything but their own pursuit ; they refer 

 the whole w^orld to their own centre, and measure all 

 matters by their own rule, like the fisherman in the drama, 

 whose eulogy on his deceased lord was, that ' he was so 

 fond of fish.' ."2 



The same author urther says:^ "AVhen anything which 

 comes l)efore us is very unlike wdiat we commonly experi- 

 ence, we consider it on that account untrue ; not because 

 it really shocks our reason as improbable, but because 

 it startles our imagination as strange. Now, revelation 



maxims, ami carries them in triumph on liis banner, may boast of his 

 eseape from the uncertainties of metaj)hysies, Itut is liini-self all tlie wliile 

 tlie unconscious victim of their very vulgarest deception." ("Essays," 

 Second Series, A Plea for Philosojyhical Sfndics, p. 421.) 



^ Lecky's " History of nationalism," vol. i. p. 73. 



- " Lectures on University Subjects," by J. H. Newman, D.D., p. 322. 



3 Loc. oit. p. 324. 



