358 PART V. WORKING STAGE. 



complete erroneousness of the theories, except on the subjective 

 side. Religious "truths", which imply interference with the 

 order of nature, or a pre-established harmony which ensures 

 the triumph of the good irrespective of human effort, may 

 tentatively fall within the same category of treatment. Again, 

 it has been shown that the Jewish nose is, from the racial 

 standpoint, a distinctly unjewish characteristic, due, according 

 to von Luschan, to intermixture with the Hittites. Helmholtz 

 ascribed a certain important function to the organ of Corti, but 

 when it was pointed out to him that birds were without it, he 

 abandoned this theory, which supports by the way the crucial 

 significance of the comparative and genetic methods in the 

 biological sciences. In all cases naturally, where the contrary 

 is proven, we should satisfactorily trace the origin of the belief. 

 Psychological factors, determined by strong interests and a con- 

 fused apprehension of the world of fact, will be found to ex- 

 plain many prevalent errors. 



182. (c) OPPOSITE. In formal logic we cannot pass 

 beyond the contrary, that is, when we have stated that no man 

 is born naturally depraved, we have reached the outer limits. 

 However, the true and concrete contrary, which we have named 

 the Opposite, affirms the "opposite", where one can be pre- 

 dicated. The opposite of "All men are born depraved" is "All 

 men are born good". If it be contended, for instance, that civilisa- 

 tion originated in the West, or that Eastern civilisation proceeds 

 from a strain of Occidental blood in Oriental peoples, we may, con- 

 sidering the evidence, speciously argue that civilisation originated 

 in the East and that Western civilisation is the result of an 

 Oriental strain of blood in Occidental peoples. In this example, 

 both statements may be crudely correct, the explanation being 

 probably that a mixture of civilisations and of races is uni- 

 versally present and universally beneficial. Thus also, whilst free 

 oxygen is indispensable most generally to living beings, certain 

 microbes die when exposed to it; "one by one the instances of 

 anomalous vapour density, which were so many stumbling blocks 

 to the universal acceptance of a system based upon the law of 

 gaseous volumes, have been shown to be not only not inconsistent 

 with it, but actually so many corroborative proofs" (Thorpe, 

 op. cit., vol. 2, p. 53); in some cases increase of temperature 

 appears to lead to diminished solubility; water, just before 

 freezing, expands; and a dose, according to its size, may cure 

 or kill.. Following the Mendelian theory, 1 the same reasoning 

 is applicable to Darwin's contention that small variations in 

 offspring form the foundation of evolutionary transmutations. 

 Again, Darwinians had maintained that only congenital dif- 

 ferences could explain the conspicuous cultural differences 

 existing between human groups and individuals. Applying this 



1 Hugo de Vries, The Mutation Theory, 1910, 1911. 



