FIRST SUMMARY 141 



Ra} r Lankester : " That only is entitled to the name of science which 

 can be described as knowledge of causes or knowledge of the order 

 of Nature." 1 Fortified by the authority of a great logician and a 

 great biologist I proceed to claim proof of causation. The stages 

 of the case may be summed up as follows : 



1 . It has been shown that during the lifetime of an individual, 



muscular action can change the direction of the hair. 

 Chapter VIII. 



2. Undesigned experiment has shown that changes in the 

 direction of the hair, mechanically produced in the 

 individual, are sometimes transmitted to the descendants. 

 Chapter XV. 



3. In all the selected examples adequate and ascertainable 



causes have been demonstrated. 



4. The changes of hair described, with hardly an exception, 



cannot be conceived as resulting from the factors of 

 organic evolution — heredity, variation, adaptation and 

 selection — indeed no serious attempt has been made to 

 connect them in any way with utility. 



Causation. 



For my sins, the most obvious of which is that I made an 

 unfortunate choice of my first birthday, I had to learn up the 

 dreary pages of Mill's Logic and those of other philosophers, for 

 the pleasure of taking a medical degree, and was reduced to that 

 orthodox state of mind in which one was forbidden to suppose that, 

 in the world around where common men and women, every day and 

 all day, are tracing causes for the occurrences they see on every 

 hand, there was anything at work which could be truly called a 

 cause. It was but natural to fall into the nihilism of the Mill and 

 Karl Pearson school. Having neither the knowledge nor the 

 hardihood to discern that their bewildering notions of causation 

 could be gainsaid, I had to remain submissive and as much contented 

 as possible with their views of an elusive subject. This state of 

 passive resistance was not relieved until I had the great advantage 

 of reading a valuable book by the late Dr. Mercier on Causation, 

 which seems to have let some fresh air into the musty doctrines 

 of the orthodox and autocratic philosophers. No one who has read 

 this work can doubt that after all there is such a process as causation, 



1 E. Ray Lankester. Advancement of Science, p. 7. 



