INTRODUCTORY 11 



mode of speech. The fact that it saves us trouble 

 should put us on our guard, there being no royal 

 road to knowledge, least of all by the way of meta- 

 phor. Nevertheless we constantly find ourselves 

 talking, in fine language, of heredity and varia- 

 tion as two " forces " — that blessed word ! These 

 " forces " are " inherent in living matter " — a phrase 

 which really means that we intend to save ourselves 

 the trouble of asking how they come to be " inherent " 

 — and there is eternal opposition between them. The 

 one " force " is ever seeking — since we have got so far 

 as to call heredity a " force," we may as well personify 

 it — to preserve the type, whilst the aim of the other 

 is to alter it. Sometimes the one all but vanquishes 

 the other; sometimes they agree to a compromise. 

 . . . This may be poetry, or journalese, or several 

 other things, but it is certainly not science, or, at 

 any rate, not adequately scientific. Whilst passing 

 this stricture upon a common manner of expressing 

 the facts in question, we may yet admit that it has 

 a certain symbolic value, and may be employed on 

 occasion, as long as we clearly understand that our 

 language is not literal but metaphorical. For in- 

 stance, we shall see that this symbolising of here- 

 dity and variation as opposing but complementary 

 forces is of value in the comparison between the 

 man and society — the individual organism and the 

 social organism. Plainly the conservative forces of 

 society are the analogue of heredity, and the liberal 

 forces are the analogue of variation ; concerning 

 which we must say much more anon. 



There is yet another mode of conceiving the 

 facts. This may be described as an attempt to 



