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scientific appears to have undergone a [and prolific fields to cultivate, the divi-' very serious change. Instead of desig- sion of labour becomes a necessity, and nating what is most rigorous, exact, and assured in human knowledge, natural science is fast becoming identified with what is most fluctuating, hypothetical, and uncertain in current opinion and belief. It is worth inquiring for a moment what amount of gain and loss is involved in the change, what are the relative advantages and disadvantages accruing to science from the disturbing element of speculative conjecture which the Darwin hypothesis has so largely introduced.

the ardent specialist, engrossed in his own work, is comparatively indifferent to other and more remote scenes of exertion. This absorption of mind in a single direction may be a secret of success in science, but it tends to narrow the vision to a particular area of inquiry and to give exaggerated importance to one class of results. The kind of knowledge with which the specialist is most familiar comes almost unconsciously to be regarded as the only kind of real knowledge, its phenomena being the typical facts and its generalizaIn the first place, there can be little tions the ultimate laws of nature. The doubt that the theory of evolution, like ignorance of other subjects even by proany large intellectual conception provi- ficients in science, may thus be denser sionally uniting widely sundered spheres and more hopeless than in minds of lower of knowledge, may, under proper regula- culture and intelligence. As Dr. Lyon tion, have a very salutary effect. If its Playfair has recently said, in discussing true character be kept in view, the theory the mutual relation of professional and is likely to do good rather than harm. liberal studies, "the focusing of light It will prompt inquiry after the links con- upon a particular spot, while it brilliantly necting various branches of science, and illuminates that spot, intensifies the darkthus turn observation and research into ness all around." And the darkness is wholly new directions. Under its influ- usually most impenetrable at points ence attention will be fixed with interest further removed from the specialist's own and anticipation on the interspaces in the field of vision. Continually engaged in map of natural knowledge, which would the study of sensuous facts and the workbe neglected so long as the different ing of material forces, he becomes relaprovinces were held to be separate and tively insensible to the phenomena and independent kingdoms. In short, it powers of the moral and spiritual universe. would establish a sort of temporary fed-He not unnaturally comes to regard these eration between the different provinces mental realities as altogether imaginary of science, and thus suggest and encour- or wholly unknown, denying that they age the prospect of their more intimate and lasting union. In this way such a conception helps to correct one of the most serious incidental evils connected with the rapid progress of science- the tendency to isolation and exclusiveness. It has long been a reproach against the votaries of physical research, that they are, as a rule, specialists, wise only in one, or at most one or two departments of inquiry, and thus taking a somewhat limited and one-sided view of nature's operations. The provinces of natural knowledge are too vast and varied to be mastered in detail by any single mind, and even accomplished students can at most have a first-hand acquaintance with comparatively few. With so many wide

can ever become objects of science, or indeed knowledge in the limited meaning he attaches to the term. With such inquirers the terms metaphysical and theological are convenient and compendious epithets for describing their special ignorances and favourite aversions. They look, indeed, with impatience and suspicion on all theories designed to give a speculative basis to the different branches of science, and unite all lines of investigation into a totality or universum of knowledge.

The doctrine of evolution acts as a corrective to this separatist tendency of analytical inquiry. It expands the horizon of science, and illuminates a wider prospect. For the old notion of nature as an