624 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



to the degree in which they appreciate and are able to 

 grasp mathematical methods. The subject is still under 

 discussion, and will belong to the History of Thought of 

 a coming age. It is enough to have indicated the latest 

 lines of reasoning which our century has marked out, 

 and to notice how they form a new and remarkable 

 instance of the growth and diffusion of the exact or 

 mathematical spirit in a department of research hitherto 

 almost untouched by it, prepared though it has been for 

 such treatment by one among whose great endowments 

 a grasp of mathematical reasoning hardly formed a dis- 

 tinctive feature. In former chapters I have had occasion 

 to show how Charles Darwin introduced into the science 

 of nature two novel points of view — the genetic view 

 and the process of judicial sifting of evidence. We may 

 now add that he has indirectly, more than directly, 

 furthered quite as much the statistical view of natural 

 phenomena through which we have learned to find and 

 trace law and order in great realms of phenomena and 

 events usually supposed to be governed by what is 

 termed blind chance. The study of this blind chance 

 in theory and practice is one of the greatest scientific 

 performances of the nineteenth century. 

 46. But whilst acknowledging the great importance which 



statistical ... p ^ • i • 



knowledge tlic Statistical treatment of phenomena has acquired in 



one-sided. 



our age, and the value of the statistical view of many 

 large departments of natural processes which escape 

 almost every other mode of dealing with them, we 

 must not forget that it is essentially one-sided. 



Clerk-Maxwell has suggestively opposed it alike to the 

 mechanical and the historical views, of which the former 



