tage in their evolution at which the main lines have been traced, the
great discoveries made, and nothing remains but a more precise treatment
of details. We feel instinctively that any further advance must be by
dint of investigations of such extent, and analyses of such depth, as
none but specialists are capable of.

But the best justification of the division of workers into "scholars"
and "historians" (and of the distribution of the former among the
various branches of external criticism) is to be found in the fact that
different persons have a natural vocation for different tasks. One of
the chief justifications of the institution of higher historical
teaching is, in our opinion, the opportunity afforded the teachers
(presumably men of experience) of discerning in the students, in the
course of their university career, either the germ of a vocation for
critical scholarship, or fundamental unfitness for critical work, as the
case may be.[110] _Criticus non fit, sed nascitur._ For one who is not
endowed by nature with certain aptitudes, a career of technical
erudition has nothing but disappointments in store: the greatest service
that can be rendered to young men hesitating whether to adopt such a
career or not is to warn them of the fact. Those who hitherto have
devoted themselves to the preparatory tasks of criticism have either
chosen them in preference to others because they had a taste for them,
or else have submitted to them because they knew they were necessary;
those who engaged in them by choice have less merit, from the ethical
point of view, than those who submitted to them, but, for all that, they
have mostly obtained better results, because they have worked, not as a
matter of duty, but joyfully and whole-heartedly. It is important that
every one should realise the situation, and, in his own as well as the
general interest, embrace the special work which suits him best.

We now propose to examine the natural aptitudes which fit, and the truly
prohibitory defects which disqualify, for the labours of external
criticism. We shall, then, devote a few words to the effects produced on
the character by professional habituation to the labours of critical
scholarship.

The chief condition of success in these labours is to like them. Those
who are exceptionally gifted as poets or thinkers--that is, those who
are endowed with creative power--have much difficulty in adapting
themselves to the technical drudgery of