290 REV. PROF. A, CALDECOTT, D.LITT., D.D., ON 
indicate another reason for breaking the silence. There seems some 
reluctance to commence our usual debate, and I should be sorry 
if the formal thanks of the Chairman were the only notice taken 
of the valuable paper of my friend Professor Caldecott. Little 
as I know about the subject, I may at least be able to express 
adhesion here and there, and to ask a few questions. 
I do most emphatically associate myself with Professor Caldecott’s 
objections to what he calls “jumping the claim.” It must be 
confessed that in recent scientific investigation there has been 
a great deal too much assumption. One feels that even the great 
Darwin himself, in putting forward his conclusions, did not 
sufficiently recollect how difficult it was for any one brain to 
co-ordinate into a theory the countless millions of facts with which 
he had to deal. And so it has come to pass that new schools have 
arisen since his time, which have given them other explanations. 
The wiser men of science are now complaining of as great 
a tendency to dogmatism among scientific teachers as is even found 
among theologians. Professor Caldecott has given us a startling 
instance in the decidedly sweeping assumption by Sir F. Galton that 
“the mental functions are subject to the same law of heredity 
as the physical ones.” The fact is that science admits no such 
thing as assumption. Guesses there may be, indeed must be, but 
the induction is not complete until the conclusions of the assumed 
laws have been compared with the facts. Not until their agree- 
ment is demonstrated can the correctness of the supposed law be 
regarded as proved. Astronomy is perhaps the most exact of the 
inductive sciences on account of the extent to which its conclusions 
have been verified. Circumstances are not so favourable for verifi- 
cation in sciences which deal with such problems as heredity and 
the origin of species. 
I might venture to ask whether the condition of the low-caste 
inhabitants of India of whose ‘“dead-level of life” Professor 
Caldecott speaks, may not be attributable to their education, which 
tends to cause their faculties to stagnate, rather than to any 
transmission of acquired characteristics. 
The writer of the paper introduces us to an old controversy, 
commenced as early as the second century A.D., by Tertullian, 
and warmly debated in medieval times. I refer to the controversy 
between Creationism and Traducianism, that is to say, whether the 
