RATIONALISM AND SCIENCE 73 



And the fairy godmother does not arrive, but in 

 her place there come many spirits of delusion ; so 

 that the ground which should be occupied by 

 ordered knowledge is seized upon by all sorts of 

 charlatans, and becomes a hunting place for all 

 kinds of untrained intelligences. 



I would earnestly plead for a better recogni- 

 tion, a more complete organization, a better 

 endowment for the studies of which man is the 

 subject matter. 



They fall naturally into three groups. Firstly 

 we have the historic group, a series of sciences 

 philological, archaeological, and the like, the 

 purpose of which is to make the life of men in 

 the past live again in the present in all detail and 

 vividness. Nothing in that life is irrelevant, no 

 detail which can possibly be reached by research 

 is unimportant. Every touch of the brush helps 

 a great picture, and in the same way the discovery 

 of a few small documents illuminating some phase 

 of past history may be in its working quite revo- 

 lutionary. A ray of light falling on a spot hitherr 

 to obscure may shew a diamond. 



The study of history has no doubt in most 

 places changed its character and methods, and 

 become more fully alive. But generally speak- 

 ing there is still too much in it of a merely literary 

 character; the enjoyment of the writings of his- 

 torians, however good in itself, cannot take the 

 place of an intense realization of the meaning of 



