Scientific Evolution. 133 



thinkers will also naturally desire the complete and final 

 overthrow of a superstition clogging the wheels of scientific 

 progress, and will justly be moved to discourage (in all 

 ways not conflicting with the equal rights of their fellow- 

 citizens to liberty of conscience) a system they deem to be 

 in contradiction with reason. On the other hand, there 

 are those who are convinced that this divergence is not 

 fundamentally a rational one at all, but, except where 

 volition intervenes, the result of feebleness of imagination, 

 absence of due mental flexibility, or simply of ignorance or 

 prejudice. The author of this essay can at least testify 

 that he has met with several, in many respects highly- 

 gifted minds, who have had personal experience of this 

 relative impotency, and who have only after many efforts, 

 and sometimes wide oscillations, succeeded in effecting the 

 mental synthesis referred to. 



Yet the conflict at present existing between the two 

 schools of thought is, as was earlier pointed out, the result 

 of a gradual and steady growth through preceding cen- 

 turies, and is, whatever be the result, likely for a time yet 

 further to become intensified, from two special causes. One 

 of these (i) is the action of the principle of the division of 

 labour. The other (2) is the special character of some 

 physical science teaching. The principle of the division of 

 labour renders necessary the application of one man's 

 almost entire energy to a more and more restricted field 

 of scientific labour. Only intellectual giants can now 



