vi INQUIRY AND INTERPRETATION 135 



It is, indeed, a mistake to suppose that all scientific 

 investigation must proceed from the general to the parti- 

 cular according to a prescribed formula, or be determined 

 by any like hard-and-fast principle. Devotion to such 

 doctrines has often led men astray and is always an 

 undesirable obsession. 



The maxim which should guide us in our work is not/rom the 

 simple to the complex, nor yet, as some philosophers have taught, 

 from the more needful to the less needful, but from the known to 

 the unknown, from truths either discovered by steady effort or 

 stumbled on by accident to new truths springing out of past 

 acquisitions, and verified by observation or experiment. Biolo- 

 gists, like other scientific discoverers, have a rugged peak to climb, 

 and are often urged to try this or that infallible method of Bacon, 

 Descartes, or Comte, a method which generally turns out to be 

 either misleading or impracticable. There is but one way to 

 wriggle up as you can, sometimes 'taking to the right, sometimes 

 to the left, sometimes turning back, because what looked like a 

 promising opening proves to lead nowhere. It is a great thing 

 to possess natural aptitude for the work, a great thing too to be 

 obstinately bent on getting to the top, but the successful climber 

 often owes much to good-luck wisely turned to account. Prof. 

 L. C. Miall. 



In his New Atlantis, Francis Bacon planned in some- 

 what fanciful language a palace of invention, a great 

 temple of science, where the pursuit of knowledge in 

 all its branches was to be organised on principles of the 

 highest efficiency. He argued that for a nation to 

 apply a substantial part of its material resources to the 

 equipment of scientific work and exploration, a share 

 of its resources which should grow greater with the 

 growth of population and the increasing complexity of 

 knowledge, was the surest guarantee of national glory and 

 prosperity. We still await in the United Kingdom the 

 realisation of this institution. The Royal Society of 

 London, which was founded for the furtherance of the 



