CHAPTER XVI. 



FIRST SUMMARY. 



A large body of facts and an adequate proportion of reasoning 

 have been brought together in the preceding chapters. As far as 

 I understand the proceedings in a court of law, the business of 

 arriving at results or, as they are there called, verdicts, consists 

 in collecting as many as possible of the facts which bear on the case, 

 these are sifted and verified, or the reverse, a certain reasoning on 

 them is carried on ; on this the verdict rests. This case before 

 the court is of a civil, not a criminal nature, and it is a claim made 

 to a certain derelict property, that is to say, the honour of forming 

 patterns on the hair of animals, claimed by Use and Habit. The 

 facts concerned have never been disputed, possibly because they 

 were not thought worth the trouble, but they have the singular 

 merit of being open to almost any educated person for confirmation 

 or correction, and the reasoning is certainly not profound, though 

 I think it is cogent. In seeking a result in such a cause, or verdict, 

 one claimant might content himself with an arrest of judgment, 

 another that judgment should go by default, and a third would 

 claim proof. It is with the last I desire to stand. 



In one word the claim is that of causation. 



Now no one can deny that between the groups of phenomena, 

 habits and hair-patterns there is an evident relation ; but the question 

 may still arise, " What is the link between them ? " I have just 

 said that the facts are unquestioned : substantially they are un- 

 questionable, and they are open to the charge that they belong 

 to the dust-heaps of science, that they are, biologically speaking, 

 such as used to engage the attention of Nicodemus Boffin. Perhaps 

 they are. Of course if they were just collected haphazard and 

 treated like a big collection of little shells in a cabinet, without 

 reference to their natural order, they would possess no evidential 

 value even if they were pretty, for so long as a natural fact remains 

 without its suited interpretation, so long it belongs not to science. 

 Hear Jevons : ' Whatever is, is, and no natural fact is unworthy 

 of study for the purpose of its interpretation." 1 Hear also Sir E. 



1 Jevons, Principles 0/ Science, p. 269. 



