INTRODUCTION 9 



such statements as this: "The new verdict is that 

 it would seem almost certain that the strain which 

 resulted in 'man' was a separate one from the 

 beginning. It is extremely improbable that there 

 should have developed a common ancestor from 

 which (as many think, at a late date) both man 

 and the apes evolved — ," she evades an over- 

 whelming mass of significant facts which neither 

 biologist nor palaeontologist can agree to discard. 

 Apparently two points of view are possible, the one 

 conditioned by an accumulation of laboriously ac- 

 quired information which must be considered in 

 reaching a conclusion, the other free from any pre- 

 conceived notions which might exert control over 

 its results. One is reminded of Osborn's statement 

 about the ancient Greeks: "Not pausing to test 

 their theories by research, they did not suffer the 

 disappointments and delays which come from our 

 own efforts to wrest truths from Nature. Com- 

 bined with great freedom and wide range of ideas, 

 independence of thought, and tendencies to rapid 

 generalization, they had genuine gifts of scientific 

 deduction, which enabled them to reach truth, as 

 it were, by inspiration." ^ 



If the principle of an elan vital should some day 

 be established, whether as an independent force 

 comparable to energy in the physical world or as 

 the Z-system of electrons postulated by Mrs. Gas- 



' From the Greeks to Darmn, p. 30, 1894. 



