“Anybody ever? Why, my dear Reeves, you’re in exactly the same position there as about three-quarters of the modern world: they are all led astray by theories. Only you were at least led astray by your own theory, not by one you’d borrowed at second-hand.”
“What, you mean scientific theories in medicine and so on? Taking the doctors’ word for it that it’s a good thing to be vaccinated, and that kind of thing?”
“No, hang it all, it would be unfair to complain of that. It’s better for the doctors to have a false theory than no theory at all. They make mistakes, but sooner or later they find out they were wrong. It’s bad luck on all the people who happen to have died from getting the wrong treatment, but still, we did our best. No, I don’t mean the guess-work by which we live from day to day, and which is necessary to living: I mean the theories learned people propound to us about the past, about the meaning of human history.”
“Darwin, and all that?”
“No, not exactly. I grant you that does illustrate my point. Evolution is only a theory, and the relationship of the monkey to the man not even a plausible theory; and yet they have gone on so long without being positively disproved that everybody talks as if they were proved. The scientist still treats evolution as a theory, the educationalist treats it as a fact. There’s a curious sort of statute of limitations in the learned world which makes it impossible to call a man a liar if he has gone on lying successfully for fifty years. But, after all, there’s something to be said for the Evolutionists. They did set out to explain a real problem, why there should be more than one kind of thing in the world; and they don’t even profess to have explained it. The theorizers I mean are people who create problems where none exist—as you did, Reeves, when you insisted on regarding it as an open question who murdered Brotherhood. They are people who trust circumstantial evidence in the face of all common human probability, as you did, Reeves, when you wanted to convict a chump like Marryatt of murder on the strength of a chain of silly coincidences.”
“All this comes out of your diary, I suppose?”
“No, I haven’t written it up yet. I’m going to write it up, about half an hour from now, that’s why you’re getting all this thrown at you. You see, when I think of you talking through that metaphone, it strikes me as a splendid allegory of the whole historical method in criticism—or rather, that abuse of the historical method which commonly usurps the title. The man who has theories about history is usually just that—a man talking down the metaphone, making a series of false statements to a person who isn’t there, and defying him to disprove them.”
“Gordon, I believe you’re going to solve the problem of my vocation. I’ve always hankered after being an amateur detective, but it seems to me the job is less attractive than I supposed—facts will keep coming in. But, by your way of it, it sounds as if I might be a success in one of the learned professions.”
“Certainly. Be an anthropologist, Reeves. Fish up a lot of facts, alleged on very doubtful authority, about primitive man—his marriage ceremonies, his burial customs, his system of land tenure. Look at the whole mass of facts squint-eyed until you can see a theory in it. Embrace the theory; trot out all the facts which support your theory; write a long appendix on all the facts which contradict your theory, showing them to be insignificant or irrelevant (you’d do that all right) and there you are. You’ll do quite as good anthropological research as——”
“Is there money in it?”