240 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



Goethe, Huxley and Whewell. Now I never claimed 

 a monopoly of fact, but that facts should receive a due 

 share of recognition. Mutual service, as Whitman says, 

 is the principle which ties theory and fact together ; quite 

 so, but when theory runs altogether away from fact, the 

 mutual service is wanting. Fact is a slow servitor, and 

 drags heavily on the impatient feet of theory. The quota- 

 tions from Goethe and Huxley do not lend support to the 

 practice of making hypotheses, rather the contrary. "Ex- 

 perience. Reflection, Inference " is an excellent motto, but 

 inference does not mean making hypotheses, nor yet does 

 the necessary process of generalisation and classification 

 which Huxley recommends. The passage quoted from the 

 last-named author condemns the mere cataloguing of facts 

 under the name of Science, but it does not countenance the 

 reckless use of theory. As for Whewell's aphorism, let me 

 commend to Whitman a study of what that author says 

 with regard to the failure of the Greek schools of philo- 

 sophy. They did not fail, he says, because they neglected 

 facts ; the Aristotelian school may be held to have surpassed 

 the moderns in its appreciation of the value of facts. The 

 Greeks certainly did not fail for want of boldness in theor- 

 ising, nor for want of acuteness, of ingenuity and power of 

 close and distinct reasoning. Nevertheless with all help 

 from the twin-service of fact and theory their philosophy 

 was a failure, and why ? Because, as Whewell points out, 

 their ideas were not distinct and appropriate to the facts. 

 May not the same thing be said of many of the theories of 

 cell life and of heredity which have been so much in vogue 

 in the last few years ? It was my object when I wrote on 

 Epigenesis and Evolution to show that some ideas then 

 current, were not appropriate to the facts ; it has been my 

 object in the present essay to show that certain theories on 

 cell life, beautifully constructed and ingeniously defended as 

 they have been, are not appropriate to the facts. I am far from 

 undervaluing the use of theory, and when I took occasion 

 before, as I have done again now, to emphasise the impor- 

 tance of attention to fact, I was not quite so ignorant nor 

 so arrogant as Whitman supposed. The motto of Goethe 



