FIRST SUMMARY.
A large body of facts and an adequate proportion of reasoning have been
brought together in the preceding chapters. As far as I understand the
proceedings in a court of law, the business of arriving at results or,
as they are there called, verdicts, consists in collecting as many as
possible of the facts which bear on the case, these are sifted and
verified, or the reverse, a certain reasoning on them is carried on;
on this the verdict rests. This case before the court is of a civil,
not a criminal nature, and it is a claim made to a certain _derelict
property_, that is to say, the honour of forming patterns on the
hair of animals, claimed by Use and Habit. The facts concerned have
never been disputed, possibly because they were not thought worth the
trouble, but they have the singular merit of being open to almost any
educated person for confirmation or correction, and the reasoning is
certainly not profound, though I think it is cogent. In seeking a
result in such a cause, or verdict, one claimant might content himself
with an arrest of judgment, another that judgment should go by default,
and a third would claim proof. It is with the last I desire to stand.
_In one word the claim is that of causation._
Now no one can deny that between the groups of phenomena, habits and
hair-patterns there is an evident relation; but the question may still
arise, “What is the link between them?” I have just said that the facts
are unquestioned; substantially they are unquestionable, and they are
open to the charge that they belong to the dust-heaps of science, that
they are, biologically speaking, such as used to engage the attention
of Nicodemus Boffin. Perhaps they are. Of course if they were just
collected haphazard and treated like a big collection of little shells
in a cabinet, without reference to their natural order, they would
possess no evidential value even if they were pretty, for so long as
a natural fact remains without its suited interpretation, so long it
belongs not to science. Hear Jevons: “Whatever is, is, and no natural
fact is unworthy of study for the purpose of its interpretation.”[60]
Hear also Sir E. Ray Lankester: “That only is entitled to the name
of science which can be described as knowledge of causes or knowledge
of the order of Nature.”[61] Fortified by the authority of a great
logician and a great biologist I proceed to claim proof of causation.
The stages of the case may be summed up as follows:
1. It has been shown that during the lifetime of an individual,
muscular action can change the direction of the hair. Chapter VIII.
2. Undesigned experiment has shown that changes in the direction of
the hair, mechanically produced in the individual, are sometimes
transmitted to the descendants. Chapter XV.
3. In all the selected examples adequate and ascertainable causes
have been demonstrated.
4. The changes of hair described, with hardly an exception,
cannot be conceived as resulting from the factors of organic
evolution--heredity, variation, adaptation and selection--indeed no
serious attempt has been made to connect them in any way with utility.
[60] Jevons, _Principles of Science_, p. 269.
[61] E. Ray Lankester. _Advancement of Science_, p. 7.
Causation.
For my sins, the most obvious of which is that I made an unfortunate
choice of my first birthday, I had to learn up the dreary pages of
Mill’s _Logic_ and those of other philosophers, for the pleasure of
taking a medical degree, and was reduced to that orthodox state of
mind in which one was forbidden to suppose that, in the world around
where common men and women, every day and all day, are tracing causes
for the occurrences they see on every hand, there was anything at work
which could be truly called a cause. It was but natural to fall into
the nihilism of the Mill and Karl Pearson school. Having neither the
knowledge nor the hardihood to discern that their bewildering notions
of causation could be gainsaid, I had to remain submissive and as
much contented as possible with their views of an elusive subject.
This state of passive resistance was not relieved until I had the
great advantage of reading a valuable book by the late Dr. Mercier
on Causation, which seems to have let some fresh air into the musty
doctrines of the orthodox and autocratic philosophers. No one who has
read this work can doubt that after all there is such a process as
causation, and that to find a cause for events is not merely a pursuit
of the vulgar, but a duty of scientific persons.
Mill appears to have given eighteen different accounts of causation
and to have contradicted himself over and over again in his works
dealing with this puzzle, devised mainly by Hume and himself; and his
successors, such as Dr. Mc’Taggart, the Hon. Bertrand Russell of “Dog
Fight” fame, Mr. Welton and Prof. Karl Pearson, have only got as far
as to reduce the number of his definitions and put his views into more
modern, but equally misleading terms. Without any disparagement of
their other claims to respect and admiration, one may venture to throw
overboard this school of philosophers when considering causation, and
one may walk and talk in a clearer atmosphere.
The subjects here considered are cause, effect, result, reason,
evidence and proof, and all can be seen to enter into my small thesis.
They may then be defined, according to Dr. Mercier, as follows:--
1. A cause is an action, or cessation of action, connected with a
sequent change or accompanying unchange, in the thing acted on, or
more shortly for my purpose _a cause is an action upon a thing_.
2. An effect is a change connected with a preceding action.
3. In reference to causation a reason means the cause of an unchange.
4. A result is the changed state that is left when an effect has been
produced.
5. Evidence is of three kinds: evidence of sense, evidence of reason
and evidence of hearsay.
6. Proof is evidence inconsistent with an alternative to the
assertion.
I turn now to the aid given to the case before the jury, and must show
how Dr. Mercier’s definitions establish it.
The cause of the changes described is the action of certain new habits
on a living growing structure of the mammalian body.
The effect is the change connected with the preceding change of habit.
The result is the changed direction of hair, in other words, new
patterns, left when the new habits have been produced, and have been
long enough in operation.
The reason for the unchanges observed in many instances is the
primitive force of the normal direction of growth of the hair.
The proof of the thesis is that the changes described in the hair--the
evidence--is inconsistent with an alternative assertion.
To Some Critics.
It may save time and trouble if replies are given in anticipation
to certain classes of critics. I refer of course to those who are
well-informed in their branch of knowledge.
To those of high authority and learning, those who ride on white asses
and that sit in judgment, who may seek to throw the case into chancery,
saying, “This will never do, it contradicts current biological
opinion.” I can only meekly reply that current or orthodox opinion
is frequently wrong, or (shall I say) seldom right, and that the
history of human thought is strewn with examples which may justify my
impertinent reply.
To another who says, “I daresay you are right in your claim, but there
are too many metaphors,” I would suggest that, so long as metaphors are
not used as arguments, the more metaphors--within limits--the clearer
the meaning of the statement.
To him who grudgingly allows, “I think you have proved your case--but
what does it prove?” I reply that it proves what it set out to prove,
no more and no less, and it is an integral part of proof of a larger
claim. And if he further grumble that these matters have no interest
for him, one may ask him to live and let live. “What have I now done in
comparison of you, is not the gleaning of your grapes of great Ephraim
better than the vintage of this little Abiezer?”
To the man who reads the preface and the headings of the chapters,
glances at the illustrations, detects one split infinitive, two
misspellings and three errors of punctuation, goes home to tea and
writes his opinion--it may suffice to remind him of “that curious
mental state which looks past problems without seeing them.”
I will conclude this section with a parable.
In the year 1788 Arthur Young in his travels through France visited the
desolate region of the Landes. “Wastes, wastes, wastes!” was his lament
over neglected Brittany, and no less could he say of the Landes, at
that time a miserable tract of low ground, bordering the Bay of Biscay.
Plantations, the sinking of wells, drainage and irrigation began to fix
the unstable sands, making fruitful the marsh, creating a healthful
climate and a fertile soil. Early in the 19th century the land here
was sold _au son de la voix_, that is to say, the accepted standard
of measurement was _the compass of the human lungs_. The stretch of
ground reached by a man’s voice sold for a few francs. Crops replaced
the scanty herbage of the salt marsh, and a familiar characteristic of
the landscape, the shepherd on stilts, was seen no more. Six hundred
thousand hectares of Landes planted with sea pines produced resin to
the annual value of fifteen million francs, and through these trees
also was achieved a climatic revolution, and it is this district which
is now a department of a great and well-ordered State.[62]
[62] From Arthur Young’s _Travels in France during the years_ 1788,
1789, with introduction by M. Betham Edwards.