FUNCTION OF CRITICISM IN ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 349 
lion should be roused, and then let us say that he should 
smite and not spare his false critics. Let the victory be 
complete. 
We now pass to comment briefly on the second canon of 
identity, namely, whether the material is new or old. This 
is a precept which is becoming of increasing importance as 
the matter of scientific investigation accumulates, and with 
serious acceleration as time goes on. The immense mass 
of papers which must be examined before it is safe to pro¬ 
nounce a thing new in any subject is already becoming a 
source of anxiety to students. It is indeed the primary cause 
of the specialization now going on so rapidly, by which 
one man becomes an expert in a very limited field of work, 
but at the same time undergoes a process of isolation from 
his fellow-workers. It is perhaps necessary to submit to this 
accumulation of literature, because the human mind seems 
capable generally of only relatively small improvements at 
a time upon the work of predecessors, except in the rare in¬ 
stance of a genius being produced by the grand process of 
nature. Sometimes a vein is falsely exploited, sustained 
by the pretension of novelty and the desire to acquire a 
reputation, as when an author deliberately gives a well-known 
subject some slight twist, which persists throughout his ex¬ 
position, while in reality the work contains no genuine new 
contribution to science. Also several men may have been 
working quite independently of one another and thus have 
brought forth similar results by means of different courses of 
procedure. At any rate, we can all see that the necessity of 
a scientific clearing-house is becoming essential not only for 
the convenience, but also for the real progress of science. 
There is need that in the subjects which have been practi¬ 
cally cleared up there should be some authoritative statement 
regarding the final product of such investigations. Some 
attempt has been made towards this in two or three directions: 
(1) by means of the short summaries which certain journals 
of substantial purpose are publishing; (2) by the institution of 
congresses or conferences of specialists, who shall pronounce re- 
