142 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
be right and one’s self in something wrong, that most people, fully 
occupied with other matters, naturally assume that attitude in most 
controversial questions coming within range of their interests. More- 
over, in its relation to new evidence, the mind appears to weave about 
itself as it grows older a kind of netting with meshes so adjusted as to 
admit such evidence as will assimilate readily with what is already 
there, and to reject all other. The origin of this partizan condition is 
of course plain enough. The mind, like the body, is the evolutionary 
result of a survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence, and that 
mind or body succeeds best in the struggle which does not stop to con- 
cern itself with the merits of the case of its opponent, but which throws 
all its energies into overcoming its opponent by every means in its 
power. The habit of seeing but one side and striving with his whole 
mind for that, has been one condition of man’s development; it is 
therefore inevitable that the human mind should be naturally and 
essentially partizan. ; 
But is it not possible to secure impartial discussion of controverted 
questions ? It is, at least practically so. And the requisite conditions 
appear to me to be these. First, the student must not have felt per- 
sonally the feelings aroused on either of the sides during the contro- 
versy, either because some peculiarity of nationality or residence kept 
him neutral at the time, or, better, because he belongs to a later genera- 
tion. Second, he must be of a well-balanced and well-controlled tem- 
perament which can prevent local pride or the natural desire to mag- 
nify the importance of a subject to which he is devoting much labour 
from warping his sense of proportion. Third, he must be trained 
rigidly in the modern scientific spirit of inquiry, that spirit of desire 
for the truth for its own great sake at any cost, that spirit which is 
winning such brilliant and enduring triumphs not in science alone but 
in history, in theology and in other fields, which is giving us faithful 
histories of the Loyalists by American authors, and of the causes and 
events of the Revolution by English scholars, and the higher criticism 
of the Bible by clergymen. It is true that not even the most perfect 
combination of these conditions can overcome entirely the hereditary 
asymmetry of the partisan mind and make a perfect logical machine 
out of such imperfect material; but abundant works exist to show that 
practically impartial discussions of controversial questions are possible. 
After these remarks, it will not surprise the ingenious reader to 
hear that it is in this impartial and scientific spirit the present writer 
has attempted to treat the controversial questions forming so essential 
a part of the present subject ; though it may not be amiss to add, that 
