i 



30 LIFE AND HABIT. 



mankind — of all that is supported by demonstration. 

 For the power to prove implies a sense of the need of 

 proof, and things which the majority of mankind find 

 practically important are in ninety-nine cases out of a 

 hundred above proof. The need of proof becomes as 

 obsolete in the case of assured knowledge, as the prac- 

 tice of fortifying towns in the middle of an old and long 

 settled country. Who builds defences for that which 

 is impregnable or little likely to be assailed ? The 

 answer is ready, that unless the defences had been 

 built in former times it would be impossible to do 

 without them now ; but this does not touch the argu- 

 ment, which is not that demonstration is unwise, but 

 that as long as a demonstration is still felt necessary, 

 and therefore kept ready to hand, the subject of such 

 demonstration is not yet securely known. Qui sex-' 

 cuse, s' accuse ; and unless a matter can hold its own 

 without the brag and self-assertion of continual demon- 

 stration, it is still more or less of a parvenu, which we 

 shall not lose much by neglecting till it has less occa- 

 sion to blow its own trumpet. The only alternative is I 

 that it is an error in process of detection, for if evi- 

 dence concerning any opinion has long been deemed 

 superfluous, and ever after this comes to be again felt 

 necessary, we know that the opinion is doomed. 



If there is any truth in the above, it should follow 

 that our conception of the words " science " and 

 " scientific " should undergo some modification. Not 

 that we should speak slightingly of science, but that 

 we should recognise more than we do, that there are 

 two distinct classes of scientific people, corresponding 



