51.
II: SCIENTIFIC AND PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM
[1887]
Next to undue precipitation in anticipating the results of pending
investigations, the intellectual sin which is commonest and most
hurtful to those who devote themselves to the increase of knowledge is
the omission to profit by the experience of their predecessors
recorded in the history of science and philosophy. It is true that, at
the present day, there is more excuse than at any former time for such
neglect. No small labour is needed to raise one's self to the level of
the acquisitions already made; and able men, who have achieved thus
much, know that, if they devote themselves body and soul to the
increase of their store, and avoid looking back, with as much care as
if the injunction laid on Lot and his family were binding upon them,
such devotion is sure to be richly repaid by the joys of the
discoverer and the solace of fame, if not by rewards of a less
elevated character.
So, following the advice of Francis Bacon, we refuse _inter mortuos
quaerere vivum_; we leave the past to bury its dead, and ignore our
intellectual ancestry. Nor are we content with that. We follow the
evil example set us, not only by Bacon but by almost all the men of
the Renaissance, in pouring scorn upon the work of our immediate
spiritual forefathers, the schoolmen of the Middle Ages.
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