224 Charles Darwin. 



have been correlated and woven into systematic 

 philosophy. The methods and course of anthropo- 

 logic evolution have yet to be systematised. Import- 

 ant discoveries have been made, but this portion of 

 philosophy is yet inchoate. 



Working Hypotheses. 



But Darwin's investigations have not ended re- 

 search or completed philosophy. He brought scien- 

 tific men to the frontiers of truth, and showed them 

 a path across the border. Yet more than this he 

 did. He pointed out one of the fundamental meth- 

 ods of research. Before his time philosophers talked 

 about deductive methods and inductive methods. 

 Darwin has taught us that both are fruitless. 



Deductive methods are the logical or metaphysical 

 methods which have been already described, by 

 which men arrive at conclusions from general prin- 

 ciples supposed to be innate in the human mind. 

 The vanity of these methods has already been char- 

 acterised. 



Inductive methods have found their best expres- 

 sion in the Baconian philosophy. By inductive 

 methods men are to collect facts, unbiased by opin- 

 ions or preconceived theories. They are to gather 

 the facts, put them together, arrange and combine 

 them to find higher and still higher generalisations. 



But there are facts and facts — facts with value, and 

 facts without value. The indiscriminate gathering 

 of facts leads to no important discoveries. Men 

 might devote themselves to counting the leaves on 

 the trees, the blades of grass in the meadows, the 



