SECTION I
EVOLUTION
CHAPTER I.
Introductory.
Among the many and unprecedented changes that have been wrought by Mr. Darwin’s work on the Origin of Species, there is one which, although second in importance to no other, has not received the attention which it deserves. I allude to the profound modification which that work has produced on the ideas of naturalists with regard to method.
Having had occasion of late years somewhat closely to follow the history of biological science, I have everywhere observed that progress is not so much marked by the march of discovery per se, as by the altered views of method which the march has involved. If we except what Aristotle called “the first start” in himself, I think one may fairly say that from the rejuvenescence of biology in the sixteenth century to the stage of growth which it has now reached in the nineteenth, there is a direct proportion to be found between the value of work done and the degree in which the worker has thereby advanced the true conception of scientific working. Of course, up to a certain point, it is notorious that the revolt against the purely “subjective methods” in the sixteenth century revived the spirit of inductive research as this had been left by the Greeks; but even with regard to this revolt there are two things which I should like to observe.
In the first place, it seems to me, an altogether disproportionate value has been assigned to Bacon’s share in the movement. At most, I think, he deserves to be regarded but as a literary exponent of the Zeitgeist of his century. Himself a philosopher, as distinguished from a man of science, whatever influence his preaching may have had upon the general public, it seems little short of absurd to suppose that it could have produced any considerable effect upon men who were engaged in the practical work of research. And those who read the Novum Organon with a first-hand knowledge of what is required for such research can scarcely fail to agree with his great contemporary Harvey, that he wrote upon science like a Lord Chancellor.
The second thing I should like to observe is, that as the revolt against the purely subjective methods grew in extent and influence it passed to the opposite extreme, which eventually became only less deleterious to the interests of science than was the bondage of authority, and addiction to a priori methods, from which the revolt had set her free. For, without here waiting to trace the history of this matter in detail, I think it ought now to be manifest to everyone who studies it, that up to the commencement of the present century the progress of science in general, and of natural history in particular, was seriously retarded by what may be termed the Bugbear of Speculation. Fully awakened to the dangers of web-spinning from the ever-fertile resources of their own inner consciousness, naturalists became more and more abandoned to the idea that their science ought to consist in a mere observation of facts, or tabulation of phenomena, without attempt at theorizing upon their philosophical import. If the facts and phenomena presented any such import, that was an affair for men of letters to deal with; but, as men of science, it was their duty to avoid the seductive temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, in the form of speculation, deduction, and generalization.
I do not allege that this ideal of natural history was either absolute or universal; but there can be no question that it was both orthodox and general. Even Linnæus was express in his limitations of true scientific work in natural history to the collecting and arranging of species of plants and animals. In accordance with this view, the status of a botanist or a zoologist was estimated by the number of specific names, natural habitats, &c., which he could retain in his memory, rather than by any evidences which he might give of intellectual powers in the way of constructive thought. At the most these powers might legitimately exercise themselves only in the direction of taxonomic work; and if a Hales, a Haller, or a Hunter obtained any brilliant results in the way of observation and experiment, their merit was taken to consist in the discovery of facts per se: not in any endeavours they might make in the way of combining their facts under general principles. Even as late in the day as Cuvier this ideal was upheld as the strictly legitimate one for a naturalist to follow; and although Cuvier himself was far from being always loyal to it, he leaves no doubt regarding the estimate in which he held the still greater deviations of his colleagues, St. Hilaire and Lamarck.