THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



successfully avoid its practice and their interpreta- 

 tions of its laws seem, at times, rather weird. 



I agree fully with Huxley, the biologist, when he 

 said, in justification of his critical discussion of phys- 

 ics, that there is but one scientific method. It seems a 

 bit presumptuous for biologists, as so generally hap- 

 pens, to insist on great technical training and ability 

 in anyone who dares to criticise the deductions of 

 biology, and then to apply their theories to the far 

 more difficult and complex fields of sociology and 

 religion in which their own study and training is per- 

 haps not thorough and first-hand. Is it not a fact that 

 men of science habitually assume accurate knowledge 

 to be necessary in science, and agree with a negro 

 student who wished to take graduate courses in so- 

 ciology, without any previous training in the subject, 

 on the plea that everybody knows sociology, — more 

 or less*? 



I would not go quite so far as William James once 

 expressed himself : "When you defer to what you sup- 

 pose a certain authority in scientists as confirming 

 these negations, I am surprised. Of all insufficient 

 authorities as to the total nature of reality, give me 

 the 'scientists' from Miinsterberg up, or down. Their 

 interests are most incomplete and their professional 

 conceit and bigotry immense. I know no narrower sect 

 or club, in spite of their excellent authority in the 

 lines of fact they have explored, and their splendid 

 achievement there. Their only authority at large is 



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