Again, science has in the course of its growth become divided into a great number of small specialties, each pursued ardently by its own votaries. This is beneficial in one respect; for much more can be gained by men digging downward, each on his own vein of valuable ore, than by all merely scraping the surface. But the specialist, as he descends fathom after fathom into his mine, however rich and rare the gems and metals he may discover, becomes more and more removed from the ordinary ways of men, and more and more regardless of the products of other veins as valuable as his own. The specialist, however profound he may become in the knowledge of his own limited subject, is on that very account less fitted to guide his fellow-men in the pursuit of general truth. When he ventures to the boundaries between his own and other domains of truth, or when he conceives the idea that his own little mine is the sole deposit of all that requires to be known, he sometimes makes grave mistakes; and these pass current for a time as the dicta of high scientific authority.
Lastly, the lowest influence of all is that which sometimes regulates what may be termed the commercial side of science. Here the demand is very apt to control the supply. New facts and legitimate conclusions cannot be produced with sufficient rapidity to satisfy the popular craving, or they are not sufficiently exciting to compete with other attractions. Science has then to enter the domain of imagination, and the last new generalization--showy and specious, but perhaps baseless as the plot of the last new novel--brings grist to the mill of the "scientist" and his publisher.
Only one permanent and final remedy is possible for these evils, and that is a higher moral tone and more thorough scientific education on the part of the general public. Until this can be secured, true science is sure to be surrounded with a mental haze of vague hypotheses clothed in ill-defined language, and which is mistaken by the multitude for science itself. Yet true science should not be held responsible for this, except in so far as its material is used to constitute the substance of the pseudo-gnosis which surrounds it. Science is in this relation the honest householder whose goods may be taken by thieves and applied to bad uses, or the careful amasser of wealth which may be dissipated by spendthrifts.