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NATURE AND NURTURE 79 



closing our laboratories and observatories, to rest content with the 

 assertion that things like those which distinguish men from turnips 

 are merely the fundamental properties of primitive nebulosity. 



If I understand this author, he believes the attributes of all 

 living things are deducible from the properties of protoplasm ; and 



I myself believe nothing inconsistent with this creed, except 

 tHat the assertion which outstrips evidence is a crime, I am quite 

 ready to agree with him when he has deduced such things as his 

 logic, for example, from protoplasm ; although, if an Americanism 

 may be permitted, his assertion seems a little previous. 



After this has been proved, if it ever is proved, it seems clear 

 that it will hold true of the properties of the unsuccessful, the 

 unfit, and the exterminated, as well as those of the fit ; and that 

 the problem of fitness will still be as it was. 



This problem is real. By recognizing and boldly facing it 

 Darwin and Wallace succeeded in making one of the greatest 

 strides in the whole history of human thought ; and I must refuse 

 to admit that any good thing can come from a denial of its exis- 

 tence, or from the creed that it is '* universal " and beyond the 

 reach of science. 



