CLOSE OP POST-PLIOCENE — ADVENT OP MAN. 313 



from a different point of view, and even striving and 

 plotting for tlie advancement of their own hobbies. 

 Such defects certainly mar much of the scientific 

 work now being done. In the more advanced walks 

 of scientific research, they are to some extent neutral- 

 ised by that free discussion which true science always 

 fosters ; though even here they sometimes vexatiously 

 arrest the progress of truth, or open floodgates of 

 error which it may require much labour to close. But 

 in public lectures and popular publications they run 

 riot, and are stimulated by the mistaken opposition of 

 narrow-minded good men, by the love of the new and 

 sensational, and by the rivalry of men struggling for 

 place and position. To launch a clever and startling 

 fallacy which will float for a week and stir up a hard- 

 fight, seems almost as great a triumph as the dis- 

 covery of an important fact or law; and the honest 

 student is distracted with the multitude of doctrines, 

 and hustled aside by the crowd of ambitious ground- 

 lings. 



The only remedy in the case is a higher and more 

 general scientific education ; and yet I do not wonder 

 that many good men object to this, simply because 

 of the difficulty of finding honest and competent 

 teachers, themselves well grounded in their subjects, 

 and free from that too common insanity of specialists 

 and half-educated men, which impels them to run 

 amuck at everything that does not depend on their 

 own methods of research. This is a difficulty which 

 can be met in our time only by the general good 



