It is true that the great majority of men,
scientific as well as others, are so much under the control of the laws
of their nature, that they cannot go to this extreme. The tendency,
however, of a mind addicted to the consideration of one kind of
evidence, to become more or less insensible to other kinds of proof, is
undeniable. Thus even Agassiz, as a zooelogist and simply on zooelogical
grounds, assumed that there were several zones between the Ganges and
the Atlantic Ocean, each having its own flora and fauna, and inhabited
by races of men, the same in kind, but of different origins. When told
by the comparative philologists that this was impossible, because the
languages spoken through that wide region, demonstrated that its
inhabitants must have had a common descent, he could only answer that as
ducks quack everywhere, he could not see why men should not everywhere
speak the same language.
A still more striking illustration is furnished by Dr. Lionel Beale, the
distinguished English physiologist. He has written a book of three
hundred and eighty-eight pages for the express purpose of proving that
the phenomena of life, instinct, and intellect cannot be referred to any
known natural forces. He avows his belief that in nature "mind governs
matter," and "in the existence of a never-changing, all-seeing,
power-directing and matter-guiding Omnipotence.
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