506 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that any person familiar with Nature's conformity to law and the 

 mathematical improbability of inheritance of accidental variation 

 along a favorable line can believe that these marvelous results 

 have been governed only by chance. Surely Nature could never 

 thrive under such a shiftless and haphazard system, and we are 

 therefore justified in searching for the reason why. Not how beau- 

 tiful birds and fragrant flowers were evolved is the essential ques- 

 tion, but wliy. Yet we can never hope to know the causes until we 

 know perfectly the means, just as we could never have hoped to 

 know the means until we were tolerably familiar with the ends. 

 Darwin could never have formulated his theory if he had not had 

 the vast array of facts on which to base it, and it would never be 

 proved if men were to give up the gathering of the still unre- 

 corded facts. Of course, all this routine work appears in a new 

 and far more glorious light now, and much the greater number of 

 scientific workers are engaged in the collection of such facts as 

 have hitherto been unknown or overlooked. Only a very few are 

 giving the greater part of their time to theorizing on how evolu- 

 tion works, although we all realize the importance of that ques- 

 tion. So it will be when we see that the question Why ? is the 

 ultimate one, for there can be no solution of this problem until 

 the lesser ones are solved. It is neither probable nor desirable 

 that any change of method will result, for the present historical 

 system is so far ahead of any other that there is no danger 

 of our giving it up ; but it is both probable and desirable that 

 investigators should approach the phenomena of Nature in a 

 different spirit. 



As we look about for a clew as to how the question Why ? may 

 be answered, let us examine more carefully that dogmatic asser- 

 tion which we threw aside so promptly when we accepted the doc- 

 trine of evolution : " The Creator designed them so." Have we 

 any hint here as to the causes which have governed the evolu- 

 tionary methods ? That depends on some other things which we 

 must examine first. The means by which an end is accomplished 

 we know by experience may be purely impersonal, but causes are 

 always dependent on personality. This may not appear at first 

 sight, so prone are we to confuse how and why, but it will be 

 clearly seen by means of an illustration. We are accustomed to 

 say that we know why it rains, but in reality we only know hoiv 

 it is that it rains that is, we know the natural processes by 

 which rain is produced. On the other hand, we say we know why 

 we went to a given place at a given time, and in this case we not 

 only know how we went, but we do know the actual reasons or 

 causes which put the means at work. If this be granted, as it 

 seems to me it must be, we are at once presented with the condi- 

 tion that the answer to our question why is dependent on our 



