188 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



greatness without national doles or the expenditure 

 upon them of metaphysical hopes and " mays." I 

 would fain recommend the biography of these two 

 men to the study of metaphysicians. It is possible 

 that if Metaphysics began and ended with a complete 

 study of these two lives, it would avoid those pitfalls 

 and erroneous conclusions into which a wider if more 

 superficial study appears to have led it. I think all 

 will agree that it is better to have a nation of 

 Stephensons' and Captain Cooks', wrought into 

 great citizens by their inherent worth, than it is to 

 have one of incompetent clerks created by County 

 Council Scholarships out of persons who would have 

 been alike more useful and ornamental as manual 

 workers. Scholarships of this sort are themselves 

 but the outcome of unsound metaphysical abstractions 

 and social hebetations.* 



♦ For further elaboration of the plea in regard to the incidence of 

 Plague and to the relative insensibility of some animals and men to 

 pain see Postscript, page 208. 



