the science which has made this age so memorable in the history of material progress; the very associations of our word science press this analogy on the mind; we have no neutral-tinted word like Wissenschaft, applicable to thorough knowledge of any kind, and not suggestive of one kind rather than another. In our colloquial language "scientific" has become a favourite substitute for "accurate," "thorough," "skilful"; we speak familiarly of scientific cricket, scientific whist, and what not. In special provinces of scholarly research this bent shows itself in a desire for exact methods, precise formulas, everything, in short, that can increase the resemblance to the processes of the natural sciences. The resulting tendency is to make each of these special branches of learned research highly technical, and to render it more and more a mystery reserved for initiated experts. But, it may be asked, is not this inevitable? Is it not an inseparable condition of advanced research? Doubtless, to a great extent; but the point which I desire to suggest is that the prevalent intellectual bent of the age often pushes the love of technicality, regarded as a sign of superior knowledge, unnecessarily far, and that the consequence is to isolate each special department from all the others a good deal more than is either requisite or desirable. Another cause contributes: the better minds usually desire to be thorough in what they do; the vastness of the field of scholarship—of Philology in the large sense—makes them feel that thoroughness is impossible unless they restrict
