THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 



351 



quired during the life of the individual is an indispens- 

 able axiom of the monistic doctrine of evolution. Those 

 who with Weismann and Gallon deny this, entirely ex- 

 clude thereby the possibility of any formative influence 

 of the outer world upon organic form." Here we may 

 ask : Who knows that there is any such formative influ- 

 ence ? What do we know of this or any other subject 

 beyond what in our investigations we find to be true? 

 When was monism a subject of special revelation, and 

 with what credentials does it come, that one of the 

 greatest controversies in modern science should be set- 

 tled by its simple word ? 



The great bulk of the arguments in favour of the 

 heredity of acquired characters, as well as most of those 

 in favour of the opposed dogma of the unchanged conti- 

 nuity of the germ plasm, are based on some supposed 

 logical necessity of philosophy. All such arguments are 

 valueless in the light of fact. Desmarest's suggestion to 

 the contending advocates of Neptunism and Plutonism 

 was " Go and see." When they had seen the action of 

 water and the action of heat, the contest was over, for 

 argument and contention had vanished in the face of 

 fact. To believe without foundation is to discredit 

 knowledge. Such " confessions of faith " on Haeckel's 

 part lead one to doubt whether in his 

 The courage of zgal tQ believg he had ever k nown w fc a t it 



patience. 



is to know. Greater than the courage of 



one's convictions may be the courage of patience where 

 convictions are not yet attainable. 



" Science," says Richard T. Colburn, " does not con- 

 cern itself with teleological suppositions ; that is to say, 

 it is reluctant to resort to any of them to explain the 

 observed cosmos, and prefers to listen in neutral atti- 

 tude to the rival philosophies theism, manicheism, 

 atheism, monism, spiritism, or materialism but it is at 

 24 



