Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/220

204 reduced to the bare and modest assertion that the great variety of life in the world is derived from a single source in the remote past. The fact may be conjectural, but all else is philosophic interpretation of, and inference from, the fact. Hence, if any progress is to be made beyond this, recourse must be had to philosophy, and the more clearly conscious that philosophy is of its nature and responsibilities, the better for the theory of Evolution. Would it not be better, then, for philosophers and scientists to cease from vain recriminations, to abstain on the one side from theories which are indifferent to verification, and on the other from theories which are disregardful of coherence, and to cooperate in the construction, on the basis of all known facts, of a truly comprehensive and coherent philosophy of Evolution?

F. C. S. S.