320 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
many of whom become more zealous than their actual intelligence 
will justify, but also that they develope antagonisms strong and 
urgent in proportion as the real issue is not clearly recognised, and 
existing opinions and institutions are supposed to be imperilled. 
Whencesoever it may spring, it is a fact that just as the Scientific 
Spirit has become one of the most mighty forces of the age, and 
has raised up before the imagination of some attractive pictures of 
the golden age, so, as Professor Seeley remarks, in that proportion 
it has been regarded with great distrust as an abnormal develop- 
ment of a right feeling, and if persisted in the precursor of most 
serious evils. 
Such being the actual facts of the case, so far as relates to the 
existence of the Scientific Spirit, the differing forms of its ex- 
pression, and the feeling of distrust with which in some quarters it 
is regarded, I will venture, apart from controversy, to offer a few 
observations with a view to the formation of a fair judgment 
on the question at issue. I think it is right to say most em- 
phatically that the prominence given to Physical Science, and the 
devotion with which the strictly Scientific Spirit is cherished, 
seem to be justified by facts. The truth is Science has, by a 
natural development of the human intelligence, won a position 
from which it can never be dislodged, unless indeed a reversion of 
Nature should take place ; and the Scientific Spirit now abroad, in 
so far as it is uncontaminated with an alien element, is an evolved 
intellectual atmosphere as much a part of mental life as the 
ordinary atmosphere is of physical life. To war against it is 
to strive against the inevitable. Considering how very frail we all 
are, it is not perhaps surprising that those who really know what 
has been and is still being achieved should sometimes forget the 
severe calmness appropriate to the pure searcher after truth, and 
indulge in extravagant language, and in fond dreams of coming 
marvels. Science is based on a necessity of our higher nature. 
We are formed to know, and our intellectual life is complete only 
in so far as we obtain for ourselves, among other forms of know- 
ledge, not merely crude notions of the order of Nature, but a fair 
mental transcript of it. The very processes of acquiring such 
knowledge not only develope in the individuals who share in the 
toil, the powers of accurate observation, careful analysis, cautious 
judgment, along with a deepening love of truth, but also tend by 
example and generation to raise the standard of exactitude in 
