EVOLUTION 185 



and right-thinking people regard as an evil in society or 

 in government, and straightway this explains for him 

 the whole of our present unhappy condition. This 

 particular tare must be rooted up, and rooted up im- 

 mediately without any thought as to the possible 

 destruction of the plants we must cultivate. The ab^ 

 normal tissue must be destroyed without reference to 

 the fact that the method of destruction may debilitate 

 the normal tissue. 



This habit of considering only one factor, when per- 

 haps scores are involved, indicates a very primitive and 

 untrained condition of mind. In the youth of science 

 it often threw its votaries into hostile camps, each 

 proclaiming rival factors, when the problem really 

 demanded all the factors they had and many more 

 besides. 



It is fortunate when the leaders of public sentiment 

 have gotten hold of one real factor. They may overdo 

 it, and work damage by insisting upon some special 

 form of action on account of it, but so far as it goes it is 

 the truth. It is more apt to be the case, however, that 

 the factor claimed holds no relation whatever to the 

 result. This is where political demagoguery gets in its 

 most unrighteous work, and preys upon the gullibility 

 of the untrained; and is the soil in which the noxious 

 weeds of destructive radicalism, charlatanism, and re- 

 ligious cant flourish. 



It is to such blindness that scientific training is 

 bringing a little glimmer of light, and when the world 

 one day really opens its eyes, and it is well if it open 

 them gradually, the old things will have passed away. 



