III. WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE 

 SYSTEM 



EXCLUSIVE and long-continued devotion 

 to any special line of study is liable to 

 lead to forgetfulness of other, even kin- 

 dred, lines almost, in extreme cases, to a kind 

 of atrophy of other parts of the mind. There 

 is the example of Darwin and his self-confessed 

 loss of the aesthetic tastes he once possessed. 

 Nor are scientific studies the only ones to produce 

 such an effect. The amusing satire in The New 

 Republic has, perhaps, lost some of its tang now 

 that the prototype of its Professor of History is 

 almost forgotten, but it has not lost its point. 

 Lady Ambrose tells the tale : " He said to me in 

 a very solemn voice, c What a terrible defeat that 

 was which we had at Bou vines ! ' I answered 

 timidly not thinking we were at war with any- 

 one that I had seen nothing about it in the 

 papers. c H'm ! ' he said, giving a sort of grunt 

 that made me feel dreadfully ignorant, ' why, I 

 had an excursus on it myself in the Archaeological 

 Gazette only last week.' And, do you know, it 

 turned out that the Battle of Bouvines was fought 

 in the Thirteenth Century, and had, as far as I 

 could make out, something to do with Magna 

 Charta." 



56 



