XII.] THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION. 285 



takes much interest in jurisprudence, or a prize-fighter who 

 is an acute metaphysician. Nay, more than tliis, a positive 

 distaste may ^row up, whicli, in the intellectual order, may 

 amoimt to a spontaneous and unreasoning disbelief in tliat 

 which appears to be in opposition to the more familiar con- 

 cept, and this at all times. It is often and truly said, tlmt 

 "past ages were preeminently credulous as compared with 

 our own, yet the dilTerence is not so much in the amount of 

 the credulity, as in the direction which it takes." " 



Dr. Newman observes: "Any one study, of whatever 

 kind, exclusively pursued, deadens in the mind the interest, 

 nay, the perception of any other. Thus Cicero says that 

 Plato and Demosthenes, Aristotle and Isocratcs, might have 

 respectively excelled in each other's province, but that 

 each was absorbed in his own. Specimens of this peculiar- 

 ity occur every day. You can hardly persuade some mnn 

 to talk about any thing but their own pursuit ; they refer tlic 

 whole world to their own centre, and measure all matters by 

 their own rule, like the fisherman in the drama, whose eu- 

 logy on his deceased lord was, * He was so fond of fish.' " " 



The same author further says:" "When anything, 

 which comes before us, is very unlike what we commonly 



service of a nnirersal pliiiosophy, and so turned into instruments of mis- 

 chief and distortion. That " we can know nothing but phenomena" — 

 thnt " rausntion is simply constant priority" — tliat '* mon nre povrrnrd 

 invariably by their interests," arc examples of rules allowable as domi- 

 nant hypotheses in physios or political economy, but exercisiiip n deso- 

 lating tyranny wlicn thrust on to the throne of universal empire. Ho 

 ^\lio seizes tipon these and similar maxims, and carries them in triumph 

 on his banner, may boast of his escape from the uncertainties of meta- 

 physics, but is himself all the while the unconscious victim of their very 

 vulgarcst deception." ("Essays," Second Scries, A Flea /or Fhilosophi- 

 cal Studies, p. 421.) 



" Lecky's "History of Rationalism," vol. i., p. 73. 



88 " Lectures on University Subjects," by J. II. Newman, D. D., p. 

 322. 



«» Loo. cit., p. 324. 



