72 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



II 



he endeavours to prove that species may he 

 originated by selection ; secondly, he attempts to 

 show that natural causes are competent to exert 

 selection ; and thirdly, he tries to prove that the 

 most remarkable and apparently anomalous 

 phenomena exhibited by the distribution, 

 development, and mutual relations of species, 

 can be shown to be deducible from the general 

 doctrine of their origin, which he propounds, 

 combined with the known facts of geological 

 change ; and that, even if all these phenomena 

 are not at present explicable by it, none are 

 necessarily inconsistent with it. 



There cannot be a doubt that the method of 

 inquiry which Mr. Darwin has adopted is not only 

 rigorously in accordance with the canons of 

 scientific logic, but that it is the only adequate 

 method. Critics exclusively trained in classics or 

 in mathematics, who have never determined a 

 scientific fact in their lives by induction from 

 experiment or observation, prate learnedly about 

 Mr. Darwin's method, which is not inductive 

 enough, not Baconian enough, forsooth, for them. 

 But even if practical acquaintance with the process 

 of scientific investigation is denied them, they may 

 learn, by the perusal of Mr. Mill's admirable 

 chapter " On the Deductive Method," that there 

 are multitudes of scientific inquiries in which the 

 method of pure induction helps the investigator 

 but a very little way. 



