ON THE GENETIC VIEW OF NATURE. 



345 



events or biographies, it lias Iteen gradually united and 

 organised as a whole, largely through the same judicial 

 sifting of manifold ovidenec and clalioration of critical 

 methods of research. Of this 1 hope to treat in a 

 different portion of this work : here 1 only wish to 

 diaw attention to the enlarged aspect, which in both 

 instances has, through the same process of development, 41. 

 come over our studies. When once we rise from the on a large 



scale. 



contemplation and examination of details and single facts, 

 and grasp the connection and economy of the whole as 

 a subject worthy of special attention, we involuntarily in- 

 troduce two new elements into our research — the element 

 of conjecture and the element of speculation. The former 

 is needed to fill up the many gaps which we find in the 

 actual records when we wish to string them together into 

 a united and intelligible whole ; the latter is the inquiry 

 into the general principles which underlie any and every 

 development of the kind we have in view. The creation 

 l)y Darwin of the science and history of nature, as dis- 

 tinguished from the science and history of natural ob- 

 jects and single processes, has been accompanied and 

 strengthened by the appearance of conjectural and specu- 

 lative attempts ; just as the cultivation of the science 

 of general history has gone hand in hand with, and 

 has been supported by, the brilliant results of philo- 

 logical conjecture and the philosophy of history.^ Of 



' In an el()i|Ueiit passage Professor 

 Parker coiiipaies the work of the 

 naturalist of to-day with tliat of 

 the pliih)logist. This passage occurs 

 in his Memoir on the Fowl (18ti8), 

 and is (juoted in his book ' On tlie 

 Morphology of the Skull ' (by Parker 

 and Bettany, London, 1877, p. 362): 



" Whilst at work I seemed to my- 

 self to iuive been endeavouring to 

 decipher a palimpsest, and one not 

 erased and written upon again just 

 once but five or six times over. 

 Having erased, as it were, the 

 characters of the culminating type 

 — those of the gaudy Indian bird 



