the secret of the mysterious property of the mind by which error
ministers to truth, and truth slowly but irrevocably prevails #73.
Theirs is the logic of discovery #74, the demonstration of the
advance of knowledge and the development of ideas, which as the
earthly wants and passions of men remain almost unchanged, are
the charter of progress and the vital spark in history. And they
often give us invaluable counsel when they attend to their own
subjects and address their own people. Remember Darwin taking
note only of those passages that raised difficulties in his way;
the French philosopher complaining that his work stood still,
because he found no more contradicting facts; Baer, who thinks
error treated thoroughly nearly as remunerative as truth, by the
discovery of new objections; for, as Sir Robert Ball warns us, it
is by considering objections that we often learn #75. Faraday
declares that "in knowledge, that man only is to be condemned and
despised who is not in a state of transition." And John Hunter
spoke for all of us when he said: "Never ask me what I have said
or what I have written; but if you will ask me what my present
opinions are, I will tell you."

From the first years of the century we have been quickened and
enriched by contributors from every quarter. The jurists brought
us that law of continuous growth which has transformed history
from a chronicle of casual occurrences into the likeness of
something organic #76. Towards 1820 divines began to recast their
doctrines on the lines of development, of which Newman said, long
after, that evolution had come to confirm it #77. Even the
Economists, who were practical men, dissolved their science into
liquid history, affirming that it is not an auxiliary, but the
actual subject-matter of their inquiry #78. Philosophers claim that,