334 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
explicitly in reference to the form of the Scientific Spirit which has 
been described as exaggerated, and which many most distinguished 
men of Science disown. It is no part of our present business to 
show the untenableness of some of those positions referred to 
by way of illustrating its character ; for that would mean a series 
of reasonings scarcely suitable for the present occasion. There are, 
however, a few general facts which may be mentioned by way of 
justifying the aversion of many scientific men to the tone and 
method adopted, and as explaining why I have ventured to speak 
of this spirit as ultra and illegitimate. 
It will have been noted that this spirit seems to have been born 
of the emotional excitement produced by the circumstance, that the 
ordinary sober matter-of-fact methods of Physical Science in their 
application to purely physical subjects bring the mind to the border- 
land of what is more subtle and more mysterious than even the 
most ethereal element or refined form of force. The dualism of 
thought and object of thought ; the opposite poles of self and non- 
self ; the presence of a set of objective qualities, measurable and 
expressible in terms of matter and force, and of a radically diverse 
set not so to be measured or expressed, opens up the vast question 
of an indestructible and incommunicable difference in the nature of 
things. The existence of a region of facts characterized by quali- 
ties differing from those belonging to the other region, and so 
utterly incongruous as to constitute what Mr. Spencer has aptly 
described as a "difference transcending all difference," has been 
recognized by a long line of thinkers, in all ages has formed the 
basis of social life and individual action and belief, and up to the 
present has set an impassable barrier to the application of the phy- 
sical methods which in the region of the physical have been so 
wonderfully fruitful in results. It is in the face of this barrier 
that the false Scientific Spirit has revealed itself. The enthusiasm 
awakened by the triumphs of Physical Science in its own domain 
has so far disturbed the judgment as to create, in some minds, the 
belief that the barrier is unreal, and may be made to disappear by 
the application of the usual methods. No one can reasonably 
object to the adoption of hypotheses for the solution of difficulties ; 
for it is thus that advances are made in knowledge, when they are 
subject to revision and verification. Nor can we say that the 
limit of physical research has hitherto been attained, since every 
new discovery is as a lamp to illumine the darkness beyond. But 
