Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 78.djvu/45

Rh principle or presumption of science which must be adhered to at any cost, namely:

Nothing could better exhibit Kant's characteristic state of mind on biological questions than this passage. There are occasional bits of sound sense in it and of discriminating judgment about scientific method; and there is a certain power of at least seeing where the significant problems lie. Yet, though he had come under the influence of evolutionistic conceptions, and is in these very writings endeavoring to apply genetic methods to certain biological inquiries, he recoils in horror before the idea of admitting that real species are capable of