344 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



And, besides this, it is well to remember that Newton 

 was condemned by some of his contemporaries on the 

 basis of the philosophy of Bacon ; Fresnel and Young 

 were condemned on the ground of Bacon and Newton 

 combined. In like manner the novel line of reasoning 

 adopted or largely cultivated by Darwin has been 

 attacked as being opposed to Bacon, Newton, and other 

 great thinkers before him. In all these cases it is the 

 results, and not the theory, of the process of reasoning 

 which have justified its continued employment. Without 

 attempting to elaborate the parallel too minutely, we 

 may say that as Newton created Natural Philosophy 

 and took one Inilliant step in fixing for all time one of 

 the great laws of the material universe, so Darwin has 

 founded the study of nature as distinguished from that 

 of the objects and processes of nature, and has enunciated 

 one of the great factors which obtain in the living 

 portion of nature : through him a history of nature, the 

 genetic view of nature on a large scale as distinguished 

 from the older natural history, has for the first time 

 become conceivable. The word history indeed suggests 

 other analogies. Political history, what we ordinarily 

 term history proper, has in the course of our century 

 undergone changes and developments similar to those in 

 the history of nature. Confined once to a casual, un- 

 methodical, uncritical, and incomplete record of isolated 



which rests ou something more 

 than the two purely statistical or 

 numerical facts of overcrowding 

 and of variation — i.e., the fact that 

 no two individuals are absolutely 

 alike. The importance of the 

 phenomenon of sex in the economy 

 of living nature has been studied, 



and given rise to many theories. 

 A very good account of these will 

 be found in P. Geddes and J. A. 

 Thomson, 'The Evolution of Sex,' 

 1889. In the following chapter, 

 where I deal with the various 

 attempts to define " Life," I shall 

 revert to this subject. 



