636 VIS MEDICATRIX NATURE 



cemed rather than imposed upon it — is admitted by all, but 

 the interpretation is as difficult as the fact is obvious. It 

 is a philosophical problem, but a scientific note may be per- 

 mitted. To be asked how the marvellous fabric of science, 

 one of the greatest human achievements, is to be explained 

 in terms of evolutionary formulae, is like being asked to 

 account for the evolution of some very complex and relatively 

 perfect structure like the human eye. Such questions have 

 to be treated historically. Science and the eye must be 

 looked at as the results of long processes of evolution, vastly 

 older than Man. We trace the eye back to simple clusters 

 of sensory cells, and we trace science back to simple practical 

 lore, and further back still to pre-human capacities of learn- 

 ing. The acquisition and the expansion of the early lore 

 had assuredly survival value; inborn curiosity has been 

 from first to last a stimulus to inquiry; registration of gains 

 in language and reeords, in instruments and permanent 

 products, has made compound-interest advance possible. The 

 result is not less admirable because its early stages were 

 humble ; but to ignore the early stages is to make the Ascent 

 of Man magical. 



But this does no more than give setting to the metaphysi- 

 cal problem. The strands of naturally-determined sequence 

 have woven themselves into an intelligible pattern which 

 science discerns; is it conceivable that they might have tied 

 themselves into a knot baffling all disentanglement? And 

 we must remember that almost all the discernment of the 

 order of ITature has depended on seeing the stars in un- 

 beclouded skies. Various attempts, such as Lachelier's 

 (1871), have been made to explain the 'correspondence' 

 between the intrinsic order of Nature and Man's capacity 

 for deciphering it^ but it seems doubtful if we get beyond 



