PREFA TOR Y NO TE. 



of both the attack and the reply leaves me without the 

 inclination to become either a partisan or a peacemaker : 

 not a partisan, for there is a great deal with which 

 I fully agree said on both sides ; not a peacemaker, 

 because I think it is highly desirable that the impor- 

 tant questions which underlie the discussion, apart 

 from the more personal phases of the dispute, should 

 l>e thoroughly discussed. And if it were possible to 

 have controversy without bitterness in human affairs, 

 I should be disposed, for the general good, to use to 

 both of the eminent antagonists the famous phrase 

 of a late President of the French Chamber " Tape 

 dessus." 



No profound acquaintance with the history of 

 science is needed to produce the conviction, that the 

 advancement of natural knowledge has been effected 

 by the successive or concurrent efforts of men, whose 

 minds are characterised by tendencies so opposite that 

 they are forced into conflict with one another. The 

 one intellect is imaginative and synthetic ; its chief 

 aim is to arrive at a broad and coherent conception 

 of the relations of phenomena ; the other is positive, 

 critical, analytic, and sets the highest value upon the 

 exact determination and statement of the phenomena 

 themselves. 



If the man of the critical school takes the pithy 

 aphorism " Melius autem est naturam secare quam 



