76 MODES OF RESEARCH IN ^GENETICS 



may help the disagreeing reader to the more 

 complete classification of his own ideas about 

 statistical concepts. 



II 



Let us first consider this question : What caused 

 the development of the statistical viewpoint and 

 method, which in science had such an important 

 growth in the nineteenth century? For what 

 purposes did men turn to the statistical method? 

 This question has been very ably discussed by 

 Theodore Merz in the second volume of his "His- 

 tory of European Thought in the Nineteenth 

 Century," and we cannot do better than follow 

 his development of the matter. Speaking of the 

 origin of statistics, Merz says (loc. cit., pp. 554- 

 555): 



"That which everywhere oppresses the practical 

 man is the greater number of things and events 

 which pass ceaselessly before him, and the flow 

 of which he cannot arrest. What he requires 

 is the grasp of large numbers. The successful 

 scientific explorer has always been the man who 

 could single out some special thing for minute and 

 detailed investigation, who could retire with one 

 definite object, with one fixed problem into his 

 study or laboratory and there fathom and un- 

 ravel its intricacies, rising by induction or divi- 

 nation to some rapid generalization which allowed 

 him to establish what is termed a law of general 



