“Why do so few ‘scientists’ even look at the evidence for telepathy, so-called? Because they think, as a leading biologist, now dead, once said to me, that even if such a thing were true, scientists ought to band together to keep it suppressed and concealed. It would undo the uniformity of nature, and all sorts of other things without which scientists cannot carry on their pursuits.”[11] Darwin writes that when a youth he told Sedgwick the geologist of how a tropical Volute shell had been found in a gravel pit near Shrewsbury. Sedgwick replied that some one must have thrown it there, and added that if it were “really imbedded there, it would be the greatest misfortune to geology, as it would overthrow all that we know about the superficial deposits of the Midland Counties”—which belonged to the glacial period.[12] Some readers may object to calling the last case prejudice. They may say that Sedgwick was perfectly justified. That, however, is not the present question. Prejudice itself may sometimes be justified. But Sedgwick tacitly admitted that he not only believed the shell had not been imbedded, he actually _desired_ that it had not been. And our desires always determine, to a great extent, the trouble we take to get evidence, and the importance we attach to it after we have it. Emerson’s remark, that inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, is true in a double sense. For not only is it harmful to fear to change an opinion which we have entertained, it is even harmful at times to fear to hold simultaneously two opinions incongruous with one another. If a thought springs up in your mind, and you come to see after a time that it is inconsistent with another thought, do not immediately try to throw out one or the other. Instead, think the new thought out in all its bearings and implications, just as if you had never had the first. Perhaps follow the same practice with the first idea. By and by one will reveal its falsity and the other its truth. Or more likely you will find that there was some truth in each idea, and you will reconcile the two in a truth higher, deeper, or more comprehensive. * * * * *