INTRODUCTION 



tent direct the progress and variation from parent to 

 offspring. He can record his successes and failures, 

 and he can advance his experiments by preserving his 

 successes and destroying his failures. He thus, to a 

 limited degree, can maintain a detached and power- 

 ful influence over his result; he is almost an omnipo- 

 tent creator in his biological world. On the other 

 hand, the palaeontologist has no influence in his past 

 world; if there were a creator or ruler it was one, not 

 only distinct from himself but also one whose nature 

 and methods are absolutely unknown to him. He must 

 work, so to speak, backwards from offspring to par- 

 ent; picture their receding and diminishing changes, 

 and discover the secret causes for the changes. If the 

 pedigree of palaeontological organisms is thus a mat- 

 ter of guesswork, what can be said of the certainty of 

 the theories as to the causes of the changes from one 

 species to another *? 



In spite of this totally inadequate foundation 

 which palaeontology offers for a scientific theory of 

 evolution and the causes of variation, there has never 

 been known such a campaign of organized propagan- 

 da in the name of science as took place during the 

 latter half of the last century. Huxley, protagonist 

 of this movement, preached on all occasions that: 

 "The man of science is the sworn interpreter of nature 

 in the high court of reason. But of what avail is his 

 honest speech, if ignorance is the assessor of the judge, 

 and prejudice the foreman of the jury"? . . . Surely 



