INTRODUCTION 



' It is not enough that a scientific truth should be the possession of a privileged 

 few ; those who value the truth should try to spread it, and make it common 

 intellectual property, and this can only be done when, they realise that simplicity 

 o£ language, and correct style, and a good arrangement, are essential to its 

 propagation.' 



'The British Association,' Nature, i6th August 1894. 



Any one who may think of devoting his attention to the study of 

 the philosophy of Hfe, based, not only on the materials he has 

 himself observed and discovered, but also on those worked up by 

 others, is met, at the outset, with a huge mountain of words. 

 ' Words will govern us, if we do not govern them,' said Professor 

 Max Miiller. Any one who tries to get at the bottom of facts, and at 

 the bottom of the inferences resulting from those facts, has to grope 

 his way through this maze of often utterly useless, if not mis- 

 chievous, terminology. The essential truth may be obscured 

 by the novel and difificult-to-be-remembered wording ; so that we 

 often ' cannot see the wood for the trees.' 



By way of introduction to the introduction, let us take a glance 

 at what even leading scientists think of it all. If scientific men 

 complain of the nuisance, what would you say the man in the 

 street would think of it ? 



M. L. Guinard in his Precis de Te'ratologie, p.xvi., gives expres- 

 sion to the feeling of distress caused by hasty and reckless additions 

 to modern scientific nomenclature. He says : ' La multiplication 

 des termes aurait fatalement la meme consequence que la multi- 



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