THE HALO OF A HUNDRED YEARS 391 



hypothesis, to which many naturalists, misled by Bacon's thoroughly 

 unscientific temper, had been too averse: Accordingly, the trend of 

 scientific method had become tainted, if not with disastrous conse- 

 quences, at least with results inimical to progress, as we account means 

 of progress now. This, the former of the two aspects mentioned above, 

 has been delineated admirably by Romanes, from whom, I may say in 

 passing, I derived the only knowledge of Darwin's personality, conveyed 

 at first-hand by a mutual friend, that I possess. 



He nowhere loses sight of the primary distinction between fact and 

 theory; so that, thus far, he loyally follows the spirit of revolt against sub- 

 jective methods. But, while always holding this distinction clearly in view, 

 his idea of the scientific use of facts is plainly that of furnishing legitimate 

 material for the construction of theories. Natural history is not to him an 

 affair of the herbarium or the cabinet. The collectors and the species-framers 

 are, as it were, his diggers of clay and makers of bricks; even the skilled 

 observers and the trained experimentalists are his mechanics. Valuable as the 

 work of all these men is in itself, its principal value, as he has finally demon- 

 strated, is that which it acquires in rendering possible the work of the architect. 

 Therefore, although he has toiled in all the trades with his own hands, and 

 in each has accomplished some of the best work that has ever been done, the 

 great difference between him and most of his predecessors consists in this — 

 that while to them the discovery or accumulation of facts was an end, to him 

 it is the means. In their eyes it was enough that the facts should be dis- 

 covered and recorded. In his eyes the value of the facts is due to their power 

 of guiding the mind to a further discovery of principles. And the extraordinary 

 success which has attended his work in this respect of generalization immedi- 

 ately brought natural history into line with the other inductive sciences, be- 

 hind which, in this most important of all respects, she has so seriously fallen. 

 For it was the " Origin of Species " which first clearly revealed to naturalists 

 as a class, that it was the duty of their science to take as its motto, what is 

 really the motto of natural science in general, 



Felix quit potuit rerum cognoscere causas. 

 Not facts, then, but causes or principles, are the ultimate objects of scientific 

 quest. . . . The spirit of speculation is the same as the spirit of science, 

 namely, as we have just seen, a desire to know the causes of things. . . . And 

 to frame hypotheses is to speculate. . . . The difference between science and 

 speculation is not a diff'erence of spirit; nor, thus far, is it a difference of 

 method. The only difference between them is in the subsequent process of verify- 

 ing hypotheses. . . . The only danger of speculation consists in its momentum 

 being apt to carry away the mind from the more laborious work of adequate 

 verification; and therefore a true scientific judgment consists in giving a free 

 rein to speculation on the one hand, while holding ready the break of verifica- 

 tion with the other. Now, it is just because Darwin did both these things 

 with so admirable a judgment, that he gave the world of natural history so 

 good a lesson as to the most effectual way of driving the chariot of science.' 



While it may well be impossible to assail Romanes's panegyric, and 

 while it is eminently fitting that we should throb to its mood at this 

 time, Darwin would have been the last man to magnify his own office, 



•"Darwin and After Darwin," Vol. I., pp. 4-7 (London, 1892). 



