56 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE IN THE CENTURY. 



apart from a few classical works, for the most part 

 anecdotal. Precision of observation and record was 

 blurred by fancies; facts and inferences from facts 

 were subtly intermingled ; experiment was almost un- 

 known, indeed scarcely thought of; and transcen- 

 dental preconceptions prejudiced the whole outlook. 

 But these blemishes are rapidly disappearing, and 

 we see the rise of a young science, — careful, pains- 

 taking, precise, given to measuring and experiment- 

 ing. 



To take another illustration. It is well known 

 that one of the master-keys to evolutionist problems 

 is labelled " variation/' by which is usually meant 

 the process or the result of innate or constitutional 

 change which renders a living creature from birth 

 onwards more or less different from its parents. 

 Since the process of variation furnishes a great 

 part, if not the whole, of what may be called the raw 

 material of progress, its importance is obviously 

 fundamental. And yet the post-Darwinian history 

 of biological activity in reference to variation has 

 only recently begun to be creditable to science. 



Let us quote a few sentences from Mr. Bateson^s 

 Materials for the Study of Variation (1894) — a 

 work which has done much to lift our feet out of the 

 mire. " We are continually stopped by such phrases 

 as, ' if such and such a variation then took place and 

 was favourable,' or, ^ we may easily suppose circum- 

 stances in which such and such a variation if it oc- 

 curred might be beneficial,' and the like. The whole 

 argument is based on such assumptions as these — 

 assumptions which, were they found in the arguments 

 of Paley or of Butler, we could not too scornfully 

 ridicule. ' If,' say we with much circumlocution, 

 * the course of Nature followed the lines we have 



