I doubt whether the change proposed will sensibly alter the
characters of the group on whom our choice at present falls. Rather,
if forced upon an unwilling community, must it act by substituting
another group. The most probable result would not be that the type of
men who now fill great positions would become scientific, but rather
that their places would be taken by men of an altogether distinct
mental type. At the present time these two types of men meet but
little. They scarcely know each other. Their differences are profound,
affecting thoughts, ways of looking at things, and mental interests of
every kind. If either could for a moment see the world with the vision
of the other he would be amazed, but to do so he would need at least
to be born again, and probably, as Samuel Butler remarked, of
different parents. No doubt the abler man of either type could learn
with more or less effort or unreadiness the subject-matter and
principles of the other's business, but any one who has watched the
habits of the two classes will perceive that for them in any real
sense to exchange interests, or that either should adopt the scheme of
proportion which the other assigns to the events of nature and of
life, a metamorphosis well nigh miraculous must be presupposed.
The Bishop of London speaking lately on behalf of the National Mission
said that nature helped him to believe in God, and as evidence for his
belief referred to the fact that we are not "blown off" this earth as
it rushes through space, declaring that this catastrophe had been
averted because "Some one" had wrapped seventy miles of atmosphere
round our planet[2].
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