5 38 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



de Candolle, Geographie botanique raisonnce^ i85 5» P- 542). With 

 regard to still longer periods the evidence is by no means so satis- 

 factory as might be wished. Either the finder is an archseologist and 

 not a scientific botanist, or if the seeds have really fallen into the 

 hands of a genuine botanist the finder may have been a questionable 

 archceologist. In most cases the combined evidence of ancient origin 

 and of actual germination fails to reach the point of legal testimony. 

 The botanical evidence is doubtless complete in the case of Lindsay's 

 raspberries, but whether the antiquarian evidence of their being found 

 in the stomach of a man buried in Hadrian's reign is equally con- 

 vincing may be doubted. In other cases the seeds may indeed have 

 been genuine, taken by archaeologists quite above suspicion, yet we 

 find that it has been merely handed over to gardeners, " thrown out 

 and found to grow," or even asserted by eminent botanists without 

 trial or after an inspection with the microscope to be incapable of 

 germinating. The question whether seeds taken from tombs (rather 

 than from mummy wrappings) or from considerable distances below 

 the surface of the soil might not germinate after many centuries seems 

 an unsettled one. The point in the text, on p. 358, is sufficiently 

 illustrated by the known periods of fifty to a hundred years. ^ 



NOTE V 



A. R. Wallace on Matter (p. 247) 



Perhaps a maximum of confusion between our perceptions and 

 conceptions is reached in Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace's discussion of 

 Matter in his Natural Selection. It would not be needful to refer to 

 this singularly feeble contribution of a great naturalist to physical 

 science, had he not recently republished it without any qualifying 

 remarks {Natural Selection and Tropical Nature, pp. 207-14. 

 London, 1891). According to Mr. Wallace, matter is not a thing- 

 in-itself, but is force, and all force is probably will-force. It is un- 

 necessary here to again remark on the illegitimate inference made in 

 this extension of the term will (p. 58). But as force is only evidenced 

 in change of motion, we may well ask what it is which Mr. Wallace 

 supposes to move. If he is talking of the perceptual sphere, he fails 

 to distinguish between our appreciation of individual groups of sense- 

 impressions and of change in these groups, or indeed between 

 perceptions and the routine of perception. If he is talking of the 

 conceptual sphere he fails to distinguish between the moving ideals 

 (geometrical bodies, points, or Boscovich's " centres of force ") and 

 the modes of their motion. As a matter of fact he uses force for 

 sense-impression, for sequence of sense-impressions, for moving ideal, 



1 Samples of the tales and the opinions which pass for evidence will be 

 found in J. Philipson's article : The Vitality of Seeds fotmd in the Wrappings 

 of Egyptian Mummies, Archseologia ^liana, vol. xv., 1890. 



