The difference and discrepancy, however, which is at first felt, is soon seen to proceed not from the reason but from a want of flexibility in the imagination.

This want is far from surprising.

Not only may a man naturally be expected to be an adept in his own art, but at the same time to show an incapacity for a very different mode of activity.[281] We rarely find an artist who takes much interest in jurisprudence, or {268} a prizefighter who is an acute metaphysician.

Nay, more than this, a positive distaste may grow up, which, in the intellectual order, may amount to a spontaneous and unreasoning disbelief in that which appears to be in opposition to the more familiar concept, and this at all times.

It is often and truly said, "that past ages were pre-eminently credulous as compared with our own, yet the difference is not so much in the amount of the credulity, as in the direction which it takes."[282] Dr.Newman observes: "Any one study, of whatever kind, exclusively pursued, deadens in the mind the interest, nay the perception of any other.