426 
It may be well to bear in mind how ignorant we are. 
Only by such a consciousness can we be stimulated to 
extend the horizon of our knowledge. But if this fact is 
used to depreciate our knowledge of acknowledged facts, 
it is a line of argument which is to be strongly deprecated. 
Mr. Wallace says :— 
“ This argument, from our ignorance, is a very bad one, when we 
consider how recently whole groups of specific differences, formerly 
looked upon as useless, have been brought under the law of utility.’ 
—(.Fortnightly Review, vol. xl., new series, p. joj.) 
Mr. Romanes says :— 
“ Be it observed, I am not objecting to Mr. Mivart’s scepticism 
touching the scientific cogency of the hypothesis which he is criti 
cising. As a man of science, he is within his legitimate province, so 
long as he is pointing out what he regards as the weaknesses and 
shortcomings of Mr. Darwin’s attempts at explaining certain phe 
nomena of organic nature. My objection to Mr. Mivart’s method is 
that it runs counter to the fundamental instincts of science, by 
assuming that of these particular phenomena no scientific explanation 
is possible. Mr. Darwin may have utterly failed in all his attempts 
at explaining these phenomena; but, at any rate, in seeking to 
explain them he was working as a man of science ; or in the belief of 
science that all nature is one whole, without any part ruled off as 
necessarily inaccessible to rational inquiry. But by seeking to merge 
in the final mystery of things certain observable facts of natural 
history, Mr. Mivart is abdicating his functions as a man of science, 
and going back to the mysticism of a former age. Step by step this 
mystical interpretation of natural phenomena has had to yield before 
the scientific interpretation.”—(Fortnightly Review. vol. xxxviii., 
new series, p. Q2.) 
The scientific man approaches a problem, then, with the 
faith that an explanation is possible, if he had only the 
true key to the solution. 
Mr. Greg argues forcibly against any depreciation of the 
action of physical law, on the ground that its effects are 
obscured by new conditions, the significance of which has 
not been properly understood.