An Introduction to a Biology 



the dangerous, explanatory one, the other. If you choose to 

 keep on the safe side, and confine yourself to description, you 

 cannot make many mistakes, but you cannot make much pro- 

 gress ; you cannot go far wrong, but you cannot go far. If you 

 want to get nearer the goal, you must dare to pass the barri- 

 cade separating the safe from the dangerous. If you pass 

 it you stand to lose all by spending your life in going astray, 

 but you stand to get towards your goal. 



If ultimately you do not pass it you will have the com- 

 pany of Mr. Exclusive Systematist, Mr. Pure Morphologist, 

 Mr. Collector, and Mr. Nomenclature Specialist men who 

 have never gone astray, all conscious of their blameless past. 



But if, tempted by the greater prizes, and careless of 

 the greater dangers on the other side of the barrier, you 

 pass it, a very different spectacle will meet your eyes. You 

 will see Selectionist trudging two miles off the track on 

 the one side, and Mutationist two miles off it on the other ; 

 and you will hear the former say : " Look at Mutationist ; 

 he has gone hopelessly astray ; he is four miles off the track. 

 I am on the high road. Follow me, and you will reach the 

 goal." And the latter : " If that isn't Selectionist ! wan- 

 dering about, four miles from the main road. I am on the 

 high road. Follow me, and you will reach the goal." 



But if we ascend to the top of the tower of the College 

 we can see much more plainly than from down below that 

 each is the same distance from the road. And I think it 

 is a good thing sometimes to detach ourselves from our in- 

 vestigations, and, climbing up into the tower, to try to see 

 ourselves as objects, looking, from that distance, like ants 

 on a gravel path ; to try to find out what the relation be- 

 tween ourselves and the things we investigate really is ; and 

 to ask ourselves : "Is the orderliness which we discover in 

 things really in them ; or is it not rather that we classify 

 things in an orderly way in our mind, and then say, ' Lo ! 

 We find order everywhere in Nature ! ' 



Yet, although it is pleasant and necessary to retire to 



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