DARWIN'S VIEWS OF METHOD. 39 



But he said that all his hypotheses had to 

 be abandoned or modified, and they were the 

 conclusions of inductions; so that inductive 

 reasoning by itself is also absolutely worth- 

 less. The truth is, Darwin trusted nothing. 

 Induction furnished him hypotheses, and de- 

 duction interpreted known facts and led to new 

 ones under those hypotheses; but verification 

 of his deductions was as indispensable to him 

 as sunshine to a plant. 



Darwin himself said, "Any fool can gen- 

 eralize and speculate." There has always been 

 an over-abundance of reasoning, both inductive 

 and deductive. Untrammeled induction is 

 largely responsible for the wild and worthless 

 beliefs that have burdened the world; and 

 untrammeled deduction is as largely respon- 

 sible for the dogmatic dry-rot that has pre- 

 vented progress in human discovery and beliefs. 

 Darwin was one of the most powerful deductive 

 reasoners that ever lived; and he was perfectly 

 fearless in making inductions, for, as he said 

 himself, he made an hypothesis on every sub- 

 ject. But the illustrations of the various logi- 

 cal processes that have been drawn from his 

 works show that even he with his almost 

 superhuman powers of observation, his innate 

 desire to refer every fact to a general law, his 



