of human effort, merely for want of guidance, and a clear
consciousness of the end to be pursued."[124]

Dilettantism is incompatible with a certain elevation of mind, and with
a certain degree of "moral perfection," but not with technical
proficiency. Some of the most accomplished critics merely make a trade
of their skill, and have never reflected on the ends to which their art
is a means. It would, however, be wrong to infer that science itself has
nothing to fear from dilettantism. The dilettanti of criticism who work
as fancy or curiosity bids them, who are attracted to problems not by
their intrinsic importance, but by their difficulty, do not supply
historians (those whose work it is to combine materials and use them for
the main purposes of history) with the materials of which the latter
have the most pressing need, but with others which might have waited. If
the activity of specialists in external criticism were exclusively
directed to questions whose solution is important, and if it were
regulated and guided from above, it would be more fruitful.

The idea of providing against the dangers of dilettantism by a rational
"organisation of labour" is already ancient. Fifty years ago it was
common to hear people talking of "supervision," of "concentrating
scattered forces;" dreams were rife of "vast workshops" organised on the
model of those of modern industry, in which the preparatory labours of
critical scholarship were to be performed on a great scale, in the
interests of science. In nearly all countries, in fact, governments
(through the medium of historical committees and commissions),
academies, and learned societies have endeavoured in our day, much as
monastic congregations did of old, to group professed scholars for the
purposes of vast collective enterprises, and to co-ordinate their
efforts. But this banding of specialists in external criticism for the
service and under the supervision of competent men presents great
mechanical difficulties. The problem of the "organisation of scientific
labour" is still the order of the day.[125]

III. Scholars are often censured for pride and excessive harshness in
the judgments which they pass on the labours of their colleagues; and
these faults, as we have seen, are often attributed to their excessive
"preoccupation with little things," especially by persons whose attempts
have been severely judged. In reality there do exist modest and kindly
scholars: it is a que