298 Instinct. 



known, — when I consider the mistakes of the best 

 observers, and the disagreements of those who in- 

 terpret accepted facts, I can only assure myself that 

 these subjects have been presented as I have read 

 them in nature, and can only hope that the work 

 has been done with due caution. The conclusions 

 are presented as suggestions, whose truth is to be 

 tried by future observers. No one will be more 

 pleased than myself, when these conclusions are dis- 

 placed by others, which plainly arise from broader 

 and sounder generalizations. But such generaliza- 

 tions can never be reached by those theorists who 

 manufacture their own facts, nor by those observers 

 who have reduced themselves by their narrow fields 

 of labor to the condition of scientific artisans. 



To secure the results which all desire, — the full 

 knowledge of man in all his relations, — two classes 

 of laborers are needed ; those who give to a single 

 department of Nature, or phase of society, the study 

 of a lifetime, and those who have power to use 

 the labors of such men in forming a system of ed- 

 ucation or the machinery of government. But the 

 specialist is often tempted to generalize far beyond 

 where he has the ability to go. His success in one 

 department gives him courage to enter fields as a 

 master, where he is only a novice. His acknowl- 

 edged excellence, in a single department, gives his 

 words weight on subjects of which he is utterly ig- 

 norant. So it not unfrequently happens that a 

 learned man does as much mischief by his crude 

 theories on subjects beyond his sphere of knowl- 

 edge, as he does good by his positive additions to 



