14 THE LIFE OF SCIENCE 



or their success considerably delayed, by various irrelevant cir- 

 cumstances. This explains why the proper launching of an inven- 

 tion is so tremendously important. But when it comes to social or 

 political problems (not to speak of religious ones) it is almost as 

 difficult to obtain a proper appreciation of them as it was in the 

 middle ages. Indeed a large number of the non- or half-educated 

 people, even of the most enlightened nations, are still intellectually 

 in the medieval stage. That is, they are uncritical, unable to judge 

 matters dispassionately, unable to disentangle truth from its web 

 of prejudice. We should not, in our turn, judge them too severely, 

 for even the greatest heroes of truth were not entirely untram- 

 melled. It humbles our minds but mollifies our hearts to realize that 

 each of them, after having fought gallantly, one after another, the 

 errors and the prejudices which lay ambushed along his way, was 

 finally checked by some imaginary obstacle which he could not 

 overcome, by a last prepossession which he durst not challenge. 



