216 EVOLUTION 



science from the social life, the prevalent 

 thought of the generation in which they arise, 

 is indeed a fiction, a superstition of the 

 scientist which we would fain shatter beyond 

 repair; but the science itself becomes all the 

 sounder for recognizing its origins and its 

 resources, its present limitations and its 

 needs of fresh light from other minds, from 

 different social moulds. Robinson Crusoe 

 made an excellent survey of his island, and 

 felt a legitimate scientific assurance of its 

 thoroughness, a corresponding personal pride 

 also; but when Friday came, bringing with 

 him a widely different tradition of culture, his 

 fresh survey not only enriched his master's 

 at many a point, but taught him, indeed 

 each of them, its relativity as well. Here 

 indeed is the practical criterion of scientific 

 conclusions, their verifiability by diverse 

 minds. So far then from sneering at La- 

 marck as an impassioned son of the re volution, 

 at Darwin as a shrewd and prosperous 

 modern Englishman, at Weismann as a 

 German ennobled, and so on, we begin to 

 see how, just as "it takes all kinds of people 

 to make a world," so it must also to give 

 anything like a full account of it, to clear 

 these partial accounts up into a science. 

 A science is one of the most collective, most 

 historic, of products; and most social there- 



