76 The Bible of Nature 



a false simplicity to facts, or "giving to the ignorant, 

 as a gospel, in the name of Science, the rough 

 guesses of yesterday that to-morrow should for- 

 get." 1 He would be a bold man who should say 

 that he thoroughly understood the tides, not to 

 speak of the weather, and no astronomer pretends 

 that he really knows how the worlds were formed. 

 He thinks that he is on the sure track of knowing, 

 that is all. How little we know of the possible 

 origin of the eighty or so different kinds of ele- 

 ments? But this sort of argumentum ad igno- 

 rantiam, while healthy enough within limits, can 

 give no permanent satisfaction. It crumbles when 

 we read the history of scientific progress in a single 

 century. The lap of the future is full of scientific 

 puzzles, but who will pick out those that are in- 

 soluble, and pin his faith on a gratuitous and really 

 presumptuous ignorabimus? 



(2) Another form of the same kind of argument 

 is also useful within limits. It consists in point- 

 ing out that many of the terms currently used in 

 chemico-physical interpretations of inanimate nat- 

 ure are not really .simple, but are big with mystery. 

 What is gravitation, for instance, or what is elec- 

 tricity, or what is matter itself ? If this argument 

 means that science starts by postulating some- 

 thing "given," it is sound; but if it says that gravi- 



J W. Bateson, "Materials for the Study of Variation," 

 London, 1894. 



