PROGRESSIVENESS OF SCIENCE. 51 



bridge — that before this recapitulation-doctrine can 

 be accepted it must be subjected to emendations so 

 serious that it comes to resemble a shoe cobbled so 

 often that almost nothing of the original structure 

 remains. We read of the stuffed horse of Wallen- 

 stein at Prag which has " only the head, legs, and 

 part of the body renewed,'^ and the " biogenetisches 

 Grundgesetz " seems much in the same state at 

 present. In revised fonu it must prove its power of 

 survival a little longer, before we can admit it to a 

 place of honour among the scientific generalisations 

 of the first magnitude. 



A recent paper on the cardinal principles of science 

 reminds us that we have overlooked " The Uniform- 

 ity of N'ature," which states that in similar condi- 

 tions similar things are likely to happen, and also 

 the platitudinarian doctrine of " The Responsivity of 

 Mind," which asserts that minds react in similar 

 ways to similar stimuli. With every wish to be 

 generous, we cannot throw these in, for the first seems 

 a platitude — a fallacious platitude — and the second, 

 well, it is a corollary of the first. 



Huxley gets credit for the phrase " The Uni- 

 formity of STature," which has been called a cardinal 

 principle, indeed the cardinal principle of science. 

 But if Huxley made the phrase, which we doubt, 

 it does not seem so happy as some others that he 

 minted. It is difiicult to state clearly what the so- 

 called principle means. That there are uniformities 

 of sequence in the world around us all will admit, 

 — else there were no science possible — ^but what the 

 uniformity is remains obscure. We believe that the 

 gravitation formula fits wherever it can be applied, 

 that is one uniformity ; we find no evidence to 

 warrant our doubting that what we call matter and 



