NATURAL SELECTION 107 



constitute the creed of science, are insinuated into 

 the belief and commerce of mankind by being admir- 

 ably tricked out in alluring costumes of fine phrase- 

 making and artful and dexterous nomenclature, with 

 a marvellously clever adaptation of style to the 

 concepts of philosophic thinking and scientific 

 deduction. 



His assumed factors and processes run side by side 

 with his groupings of scientific facts which they are 

 audaciously said to explain, without really touching 

 each other, without ever at any point establishing 

 a yital connection. His initial assumptions, along 

 with those that are from time to time invented to 

 serve the needs of his advancing theory, are simply 

 gaily dressed marionettes, prancing through his book 

 in gorgeous attire ; but being in themselves mere sticks 

 hung upon wires and pulled by a string, they are dead 

 things, having no power of living contact with the 

 facts which they have been invented to explain. 



Nevertheless, by the dexterous prestidigitation of 

 the master, his assumptions and the actual facts of 

 Nature are so cleverly interwoven and mixed up 

 together, that the unwary reader finds himself assent- 

 ing to statements in which the facts are explained by 

 the assumptions, although the latter have no material 

 causa existendi, or claim to be accepted. As a 

 naturalist, or Nature specialist, no man was better 

 equipped with the knowledge of his particular subject, 

 with familiar acquaintance with the labours of his 

 predecessors, with keener powers of minute observation, 



