Xll PREFACE. 



difficulties is hard. Though the problem is all unsolved and the 

 old questions stand unanswered, there are those who have taken 

 on themselves the responsibility of giving to the ignorant, as a 

 gospel, in the name of Science, the rough guesses of yesterday 

 that tomorrow should forget. Truly they have put a sword in the 

 hand of a child. 



If the Study of Variation can serve no other end it may make 

 us remember that we are still at the beginning, that the com- 

 plexity of the problem of Specific Difference is hardly less now 

 than it was when Darwin first shewed that Natural History is a 

 problem and no vain riddle. 



On the first page I have set in all reverence the most solemn 

 enuntiation of that problem that our language knows. The priest 

 and the poet have tried to solve it, each in his turn, and have 

 failed. If the naturalist is to succeed he must go very slowly, 

 making good each step. He must be content to work with the 

 simplest cases, getting from them such truths as he can, learning 

 to value partial truth though he cheat no one into mistaking 

 it for absolute or universal truth; remembering the greatness 

 of his calling, and taking heed that after him will come Time, 

 that "author of authors," whose inseparable property it is ever 

 more and more to discover the truth, who will not be deprived 

 of his due. 



St John's College, Cambridge. 

 29 December, 1893. 



