Heredity, Variation and Genius 5 



to ascribe it to the inherent impulse of proto- 

 plasm under suitable stimulation to increase and 

 divide when it can and as adaptively as it can. 

 Scientific enquiry has to concern itself for the 

 present with the what is without knowing the 

 why. As in the end it must perforce do with the 

 ultimate why of things ; for when science has 

 reached its utmost stretch it will not be omni- 

 science, each height of painfully scaled outlook 

 disclosing height towering above height without 

 end. It is the foolish body only, not considering 

 wiselv, who aspires to " pierce the veil of the 

 unknown " ; the lifting of one veil evermore dis- 

 covers another veil and will surely do so to the 

 ending of mortality. 



All the laboured learnings of mankind being 

 but modes of self-expression in response to pro- 

 gressive adaptations of experience, the symbolical 

 notations of the classified experiences of limited 

 beings who begin and end, and whose ultimate 

 value consists not in thinking but in being — 

 symbols too made exclusively in terms of the lead- 

 ing senses of sight and touch and of the mus- 

 cular sense — it is evident that knowledge of the 

 whence and whither of things cannot be obtained 

 by any rational method of enquiry ; not less 

 evident that such revelation by any other method 

 may be just the irrational illusion of human 

 conceit exulting in and interpreting grandly its 

 own creative exercise.* But not therefore un- 



* There is notably a singular pleasure in creative or produc- 

 tive work, mental as well as bodily, a sort of transporting 



