154 The Bible of Nature 



abundant crop of organic changes, toward tares 

 and toward wheat, and he showed how a process 

 of thinning and singling, sifting and winnowing, 

 would operate upon the ever-growing, ever-chang- 

 ing crop, so that the result was progress. 



But all science begins with measurement, and 

 the great step in advance that has been made of 

 recent years is in the dry and tedious, but peremp- 

 torily necessary task of accurately recording the 

 variations that do actually occur. Life is so 

 abundant and so Protean that biologists have 

 tended to draw upon the variability account as if 

 there was no limit to it, scarce waiting to see wheth- 

 er their cheques were honored. Without being 

 biologists, simply as clear thinkers, we must feel 

 the unsatisfactoriness of merely postulating vari- 

 ability to meet the demands of particular problems. 

 In ordinary evolutionist discourse, as Mr. Bate- 

 son justly points out, there has been continual 

 use of the argument, "If such and such a vari- 

 ation then took place and was favorable," then 

 . . . , a mode of talk which we would ridicule in 

 Paley or Butler, but which we in our inconsistency 

 still tolerate in ourselves. It is obviously our busi- 

 ness to be able to say, "such and such variations 

 do occur in Nature, therefore. ..." But we 

 are now changing all this. The very title "Bio- 

 metrika" of a new journal is a sign of the times. 

 In hoc signo laboramus. The recording and sta- 



