398 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE IN THE CENTURY. 



Let us briefly notice some of the changes since the 

 beginning of Darwin's day. 



(1) Before the middle of the nineteenth century 

 much attention was given to what might be called the 

 demonstration of the general fact of inheritance. 

 Hundreds of pages in the treatise of Prosper Lucas 

 are devoted to proving that the present is the child of 

 the past, that our start in life is no haphazard affair, 

 but is rigorously determined by our parents and 

 grandparents, and that all sorts of innate peculiar- 

 ities — both great and small — may reappear genera- 

 tion after generation. Nowadays, no one doubts the 

 general fact; almost everyone rather will agree with 

 Prof. E. B. Wilson that ^^ the studies of Darwin, 

 Galton, and others have shown that there is no pecu- 

 liarity of structure or function in any part of the 

 body too slight to escape the influence of either parent 

 or both in inheritance. . . . Both parents affect the 

 whole development of the child and may exert an 

 influence on every detail of its organisation." * 



It is hardly too much to say that in the develop- 

 ment of natural knowledge, science begins where 

 measurement begins. And this is the case in regard 

 to inheritance. Or, perhaps, instead of measure- 

 ment, which may be taken in too narrow a sense, we 

 should say that precision of observation and record 

 which admits of statistical, mathematical, or some 

 other exact formulation. While nothing can take 

 the place of experiment — ^which is urgently needed 

 for the further development of our knowledge of 

 heredity — ^much has been gaiiied by the application 

 of statistical and mathematical methods to biological 

 results — a new contact between different disciplines 



* International Monthly, II., July, 1900, p. 80. 



