216 EVOLUTION 



is indeed a fiction, a superstition of the 

 scientist which we would fain shatter beyond 

 repair; but the science itself becomes all the 

 sounder for recognizing its origins and its 

 resources, its present limitations and its needs 

 of fresh light from other minds, from different 

 social moulds. Robinson Crusoe made an 

 excellent survey of his island, and felt a 

 legitimate scientific assurance of its thorough- 

 ness, a corresponding personal pride also; 

 but when Friday came, bringing with him a 

 widely different tradition of culture, his fresh 

 survey not only enriched his master's at many 

 a point, but taught him, indeed each of them, 

 its relativity as well. Here indeed is the 

 practical criterion of scientific conclusions, 

 their verifiability by diverse minds. So far 

 then from sneering at Lamarck as an impas- 

 sioned son of the revolution, at Darwin as a 

 shrewd and prosperous modern Englishman, 

 at Weismann as a German ennobled, and so 

 on, we begin to see how, just as " it takes 

 all kinds of people to make a world," so it 

 must also to give anything like a full account 

 of it, to clear these partial accounts up into 

 a science. A science is one of the most 

 collective, most historic, of products; and 

 most social therefore, though the custodians 

 of its heritage be as yet few. 



