1 68 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



wave of science. Darwin and Mendel have shown the 

 true methods of inquiry into the problems of life ; a 

 host of followers have entered into their labours, and 

 are now sounding the limits of the seas of the new 

 knowledge they opened up. Meanwhile, others are 

 making the old discovery that no grasp of the details 

 of methods and relations lays bare the hidden ground 

 of causes, or does away with the soul's need of asking 

 Why? 



It is probable that the new inquiry into the Un- 

 knowable will repeat the faults of its predecessors. 

 Some will put forward intuitive guesses into ultimate 

 causes dressed up in the misleading garments of scien- 

 tific induction. Others will misapply the intuitive 

 method proper to poets and seers, and use it in the 

 alien territory of natural science to build new dogmatic 

 temples of How founded on shifting sand. It is all 

 an old story. But, as organic evolution proceeds by 

 choosing the fittest out of many types, so the evolution 

 of knowledge needs the birth of many hypotheses, that 

 a few may be called to become the sponsors of the 

 science and religion of the future. 



Let us then with the courage of rashness, but not 

 of entire ignorance, attempt to follow some lines of 

 thought suggested by our present insight into the 

 problems of life. 



In any branch of human knowledge the first step in 

 advance can only be made if we assume that the subject 

 is intelligible to our minds. Without such an assump- 

 tion it would be useless to attempt to connect the 

 phenomena in the definite, orderly scheme which con- 



