290 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



even the field of a microscope sufficient for 

 their curiosity. Again, her deeds are so practical 

 that many forget their divine applications, and her 

 facts are so definite that many miss their infinite 

 relationships. Hence many scientists become one- 

 sided, narrow, cold, and dogmatic. 



Even the great Darwin suffered from a too great 

 devotion to his special department of science. In 

 his autobiography he writes : " I have said that in 

 one respect my mind has changed during the last 

 twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, 

 or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the 

 works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Cole- 

 ridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even 

 as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakes- 

 peare, especially in the historical plays. I have also 

 said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, 

 and music very great, delight. But now for many 

 years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry ; I 

 have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it 

 so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also 

 almost lost my taste for pictures or music. . . . My 

 mind seems to have become a kind of machine for 

 grinding general laws out of large collections of 

 facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy 

 of that part of the brain alone on which the higher 

 tastes depend I cannot conceive. A man with a 

 mind more highly organised or better constituted 



