METHOD IN SCIENCE 25 



been recognized that in every organism, or even manu- 

 factured mechanism, the facts of hostile symbiosis are 

 fundamental. Only thus can we link the very passions 

 of politics and all strife to proved law. In another place I 

 have endeavoured, as far as possible, to use anthropology 

 as a key not only to unlock past history, and to elucidate 

 possible factors of human progress, but to show that certain 

 conditions were the true parents of all the enlarged animal 

 instincts and powers of inference seen in the modern human 

 brain. It is easy to fail, but it is a duty to try, and while 

 endeavouring to map out the ancient paths of evolution, we 

 must surely avail ourselves of every scientific lamp however 

 dim. 



If the rough suggestions of this paper carry any weight, 

 and suggest reflections upon method, it will certainly be 

 admitted that students have rarely taken sufficient ad- 

 vantage of the truth, that not only is evolution going on all 

 around them in every phenomenon they observe, but that 

 processes vitally similar to those they seek to explain are 

 this day occurring in the great social organism of which they 

 are a part. Without hope of moving those in whom evolu- 

 tion has done its work, and involution has begun, it may be 

 said that to seek to solve the problems of heredity without 

 taking serious notice of the fact that societies give birth to 

 and bud off from other societies, and to rely mainly on 

 microscopic research when great macroscopic phenomena of 

 the same kind are within arm's-length of the worker, appears 

 almost ridiculous. If Lyell worked on the hypothesis that 

 the observed daily changes in the surface of the earth, 

 though due only to causes that seemed too slight to consider, 

 might account for the world as we see it, and even help to 

 prophesy results in future ages, we may say that in all we 

 observe or experience are keys to the problems which other 



