I. 



THE ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRE- 

 TATION OF NATURE. 



There are and can exist but two ways of investigating and discovering truth. 

 The one hurries on rapidly from the senses and particulars to the most general 

 axioms, and from them, as principles and their supposed indisputable truth, 

 derives and discovers the intermediate axioms. This is the way now in use. The 

 other constructs its axioms from the senses and particulars by ascending continu- 

 ally and gradually till it finally arrives at the most general axioms, which is the true 

 but unattempted way. 



We are wont to call that human reasoning which we apply to Nature the 

 anticipation of Nature (as being rash and premature), and that which is properly 

 deduced from thmgs the interpretation of Nature. — BACON, Novum Orgamim. 



In the growth of the numerous lesser ideas 

 which have conversred into the central idea of the 

 history of life by Evolution, we find ancient pedi- 

 grees for all that we are apt to consider modern. 

 Evolution has reached its present fulness by slow 

 additions in twenty-four centuries. When the 

 truths and absurdities of Greek, mediaeval, and 

 sixteenth to nineteenth century speculation and 

 observation are brought together, it becomes clear 

 that they form a continuous whole, that the influ- 

 ences^ pi early upon later thought are greater than 

 has been believed, that Darwin owes more even to 

 the Greeks than we have~eveF recognized. It is 

 true that until 1858 speculation far outran fact, 



D. H. HILL UBRARY 

 North Carolina State College 



