HARD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OS SI P. 



25 



TWO SIDES OF THE MEDAL. 



By ALICE BODINGTON. 



N employing a meta- 

 phor drawn from 

 common life to 

 illustrate the curi- 

 ous tendency of 

 the human mind 

 to look only at 

 one side of a 

 question, I take 

 refuge behind the 

 great name of Mr. 

 Herbert Spencer, 

 who drives heme 

 some of his 

 weightiest argu- 

 ments by the help 

 of familiar meta- 

 phors. 



We will suppose 

 a medal struck in 

 memory of some 

 great event in the history of a nation. On the 

 one side is represented a figure of the country ; on 

 the other a fleet in full sail. What should we say 

 if two opposing schools arose, one of whom vehe- 

 mently maintained that the medal represented a 

 female figure, whilst the other as stoutly contended 

 that it^represented a fleet ? Should we not feel in- 

 clined to exclaim, " A plague o' both your houses !" 

 and request the disputants to look at both sides of 

 the [medal ? Yet, notwithstanding the incredible 

 progress attained by physical science through steady 

 adherence to the principles of inductive reasoning, 

 there seems some weakness of the human mind 

 whichlleads it constantly into the old vicious methods 

 of a priori argument. People do not now sit down 

 and proceed to construct a scheme of the universe 

 out^of their own inner consciousness, and make all 

 facts fit into a bed of Procrustes, as was the cheerful 

 custom with philosophers of old. But, whilst ap- 

 pearing to follow the inductive method with sedulous 

 No. 314, — February 1891. 



care, there is too often a fatal bias in the thinker't 

 mind, which places everything which makes for his 

 theory in a bright light, and obscures, or wholh 

 blots out, all evidence that goes against it. In many 

 cases, perhaps in most, the thinker is not aware of 

 his bias, but, as Darwin says in one of his letters, 

 "Nearly all men past a moderate age, whether in 

 years or in mind, are, I am firmly convinced, in- 

 capable of looking at facts from a new point of 

 view.' And for this reason he " thinks 'it of im- 

 portance " that intelligent men who are not natu- 

 ralists should read his book, because he " thinks 

 such men will drag after them those naturalists 

 whose ideas are fixed." In reading Mr. Wallace's 

 "Darwinism," I have been forcibly reminded again 

 and again of the words just quoted. Mr. Wallace, 

 one of the few still left to us of a generation of great 

 men, has had the happy fortune to inspire, in those 

 who only know him through his works, not only 

 high esteem but affection. High esteem for the 

 quiet magnanimity with which he accorded to Dar- 

 win the victor's wreath he might have aspired to 

 wear himself; affection, for the kindness of heart his 

 works constantly betray — a kindness of heart which 

 shrinks from seeing that "Nature, red in tooth and 

 claw," of whose existence most of us are painfully 

 aware. But, notwithstanding the sentiments of 

 affection and esteem which are inspired by the name 

 of Mr. Wallace, it is impossible to avoid the con- 

 clusion that his mind is hardly, if at all, influenced 

 by the discoveries of the last quarter of a century. 

 It is true that he alludes to some of these, but in a 

 very cursory way, as though hardly worthy of atten- 

 tion or of argument. He believes in natural selection 

 pure and simple, with its odd theory of constant 

 variations occurring for no reason, and owing their 

 origin to nothing in particular. Moreover, these 

 erratic variations must occur of their own accord in 

 successive generations, because he can find no satis- 

 factory evidence of use or disuse of parts being 

 inherited ! Nor, though he admits that changes in 



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