50 EVOLUTION AND THE 
to make up our minds to dismiss as idle prejudices, 
or at least suspend as premature, any pre-conceived 
notion of what might or what ought to be the order 
of nature in any proposed case, and content ourselves 
with observing, as a plain matter of fact, what 7s. 
To experience we refer as the only ground of all 
physical inquiry. But before experience itself can 
be used with advantage, there is one preliminary step 
to make, which depends wholly on ourselves: it is 
the absolute dismissal and clearing the mind of all 
prejudice, from whatever source arising, and the 
determination to stand or fall by the result of a 
direct appeal to facts in the first instance, and of 
strict logical deduction from them afterwards.” 
Having said thus much concerning recent events 
and the nature of the experimental evidence by which 
the occurrence of Archebiosis is to be established, it 
will be well now finally to scrutinize the basis of the 
old and of the new beliefs in order to ascertain the 
relative cogency of the arguments upon which they 
rest. We may also test them generally in the way 
that hypotheses are usually tested—that is, we may 
strive to form an independent judgment upon the 
question, as to which of them gives the best expla- 
nation of the largest number of phenomena, and which 
best enables us to predict new facts. 
