Page:Message of Psychic Science to the World.djvu/19

Rh the future history af this new movement will in mahy respects repeat the experience of the past. The leaders, many of whom are men of unquestioned ability, will pursue their course in a spirit of calm and patient inquiry, equally unmoved by the satire and antagonism, and by the over-excited curiosity and too ready belief, which will seethe around them. They will combine and utilise the work of isolated observers ; and in due time the world at large will profit greatly by their labours. But meanwhile a terrible amount of quite needless suffering will be caused to those who take no part in the movement, by the mere unsettling of their ordinary habits of thought. And the occasion may perhaps not be inopportune to remind young women who have not the leisure or the aptitude for systematic investigation, of the same principles which were so much forgotten by unscientific readers in the first shock of surprise caused by the publication of the "Origin of Species."