334 '^^^ Theory of Genetic Modes 



chapters. If parallelism be true, then each mode in one 

 series has theoretically — and many are known to have as 

 matter of fact — a correlated mode at the corresponding 

 level in the other series ; and each may, in so far, be used 

 to aid in the interpretation of the other. This holds not 

 only of the parallelism between mind and body, but also 

 of the concurrence between development and evolution. 



The third axiom stated above forbids the method of 

 analogy from a lower mode to a higher, either in the solu- 

 tion of a problem of genesis inside a single group or 

 series, or as between one science and another. This, I 

 take it, is the bane of contemporary science other than 

 physical — the carrying over of established formulas, or 

 the analogous application of established principles, often 

 with the question-begging application of the same terms, 

 from one mode of phenomena to another. The theory of 

 evolution is responsible for much of this cheap apology 

 for science — biology used in sociology, physics in psy- 

 chology, the concept of energy in history, etc. Evolution 

 has been mistaken for reduction, the highest genetic modes 

 being ' explained ' in terms of the lowest, and much of the 

 explaining done by * explaining away ' most that is charac- 

 teristic of the highest. And biological or organic evolution 

 itself is a storehouse of mistaken analogies brought over 

 into the moral sciences. 



It is the writer's hope — to close with a personal word — 

 that the series of books, to which this volume belongs, may 

 have done something to show the spuriousness of this 

 sort of science, and to set forth the requirements, at any 

 rate, of what may properly be called genetic investigation. 



