56 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE IN THE CENTURY. 



apart from a few classical works, for the most part 

 anecdotal. Precision of observation and record was 

 blurred by fancies; facts and inferences from facts 

 were subtly intermingled ; experiment was almost un- 

 known, indeed scarcely thought of; and transcen- 

 dental preconceptions prejudiced the whole outlook. 

 But these blemishes are rapidly disappearing, and 

 we see the rise of a young science, careful, pains- 

 taking, precise, given to measuring and experiment- 

 ing. 



To take another illustration. It is well known 

 that one of the master-keys to evolutionist problems 

 is labelled " variation," by which is usually meant 

 the process or the result of innate or constitutional 

 change which renders a living creature from birth 

 onwards more or less different from its parents. 

 Since the process of variation furnishes a great 

 part, if not the whole, of what may be called the raw 

 material of progress, its importance is obviously 

 fundamental. And yet the post-Darwinian history 

 of biological activity in reference to variation has 

 only recently begun to be creditable to science. 



Let us quote a few sentences from Mr. Bateson's 

 Materials for the Study of Variation (1894) a 

 work which has done much to lift our feet out of the 

 mire. " We are continually stopped by such phrases 

 as, ' if such and such a variation then took place and 

 was favourable/ or, ' we may easily suppose circum- 

 stances in which such and such a variation if it oc- 

 curred might be beneficial,' and the like. The whole 

 argument is based on such assumptions as these 

 assumptions which, were they found in the arguments 

 of Paley or of Butler, we could not too scornfully 

 ridicule. 'If,' say we with mwh circumlocution, 

 'the course of Nature followed the lines we have 



