st, one is apt to end by loathing the masterpiece, because of the
dusty apparatus that it seems liable to collect about itself.

The result of the influence of the specialist upon literature is that
the amateur, hustled from any region where the historical and scientific
method can be applied, turns his attention to the field of pure
imagination, where he cannot be interfered with. And this, I believe, is
one of the reasons why belles-lettres in the more precise sense tend to
be deserted in favour of fiction. Sympathetic and imaginative criticism
is so apt to be stamped upon by the erudite, who cry out so lamentably
over errors and minute slips, that the novel seems to be the only safe
vantage-ground in which the amateur may disport himself.

But if the specialist is to the amateur what the hawk is to the dove,
let us go further, and in a spirit of love, like Mr. Chadband, inquire
what is the effect of specialism on the mind of the specialist. I
have had the opportunity of meeting many specialists, and I say
unhesitatingly that the effect largely depends upon the natural
temperament of the individual. As a general rule, the great specialist
is a wise, kindly, humble, delightful man. He perceives that though he
has spent his whole life upon a subject or a fraction of a subject, he
knows hardly anything about it compared to what there is to know. The
track of knowledge glimmers far ahead of him, rising and falling like a
road over solitary downs. He knows that it will not be given to him to
advance very far upon the path, and he half envies those who shall come
after, to whom many things that are dark mysteries to himself will be
clear and plain. But he sees, too, how the dim avenues of knowledge
reach out in every direction, interlacing and combining, and when he
contrasts the tiny powers of the most subtle brain with all the wide
range of law--for the knowledge which is to be, not invented, but
simply discovered, is all assuredly there, secret and complex as it
seems--there is but little room for complacency or pride. Indeed,
I think that a great savant, as a rule, feels that instead of being
separated by his store of knowledge, as by a wide space that he has
crossed, from smaller minds, he is brought closer to the ignorant by the
presence of the vast unknown. Instead of feeling that he has soared like
a rocket away from the ground, he thinks of himself rather as a flower
might think whose head was an inch or two higher