2 Darbishire, Laws of Heredity. 



I. 



There are those who maintain that it is not the part 

 of the biologist to argue, to discuss, and to explain ; and 

 who assert that he is transgressing his proper limits when 

 he ceases to confine himself to the description of observa- 

 tions and experiments, and to drawing from them certain 

 obvious conclusions. 



I do not hold this opinion : because I am convinced 

 that if as much (I do not say more) trouble were taken to 

 understand the meaning of a term as is spent in 

 establishing the authenticity of a fact, the progress of our 

 knowledge of fundamental natural processes — heredity, 

 variation, the determination of sex, to name a few — would 

 be more rapid than it is at present. For it seems to me 

 to be evident that nothing short of a firm but unprejudiced 

 grasp, in the mind of the investigator, of the relation 

 between the facts themselves and past, present and 

 possible attempts to account for them can enable him to 

 advance toward a closer knowledge of these phenomena. 



I think that the reader will admit the truth of this 

 contention, if he is not one of those who still cling to the 

 Baconian delusion that all that is necessary for the 

 elucidation of the problems of nature is the bringing to 

 light of as many facts as possible by as many workers as 

 possible ; whereas as a matter of fact it is obvious that 

 that which hinders the progress of natural knowledge is 

 not the slowness with which facts are brought to light, 

 but the paucity of investigators capable of dealing with 

 them properly. 



The incapacitating fault among biologists which is at 

 once the commonest and the most serious is the uncon- 

 scious ease with which they fall into the error of using a 

 term without having previously ascertained its meaning. 

 And so long as biologists turn a deaf ear to speculation 



