PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 747 



scientific inquiry and philosophical speculation. So all through 

 the development of knowledge in Europe, down to the time of 

 Newton, when the use of the term "natural philosophy" for 

 physical science implies an indefinite distinction between the two. 

 But now the distinction has become tolerably definite quite defi- 

 nite in Germany and in large measure definite here. The philoso- 

 pher does not enter upon scientific investigations and often knows 

 little about scientific truths ; while, conversely, the man of sci- 

 ence, of whatever class, is little given to philosophical speculation, 

 and is commonly uninformed about the philosophical conclu- 

 sions held by this or that school. How distinct the -two classes 

 have become is implied by the contempt not unfrequently ex- 

 pressed by each for the other. 



Simultaneously there has progressed a separation within the 

 body of scientific men into those who respectively deal with the 

 inorganic and the organic. Nowadays, men who occupy them- 

 selves with mathematical, physical and chemical investigations 

 are generally ignorant of biology ; while men who spend their 

 lives in studying the phenomena of life, under one or other of its 

 aspects, are often without interest in the truths constituting the 

 exact sciences. Between animate and inanimate things there is a 

 marked contrast, and there has come to be a marked division be- 

 tween the students of the two groups. 



Yet a further transformation of the same nature has been 

 going on. Within each -of these groups differentiations and sub- 

 differentiations have been taking place. The biologists have di- 

 vided themselves primarily into those who study plant-life and 

 those who study animal- life the phytologists (commonly called 

 botanists) and the zoologists. In each of these great divisions 

 there have been established large sub-divisions : in the one those 

 who devote themselves to the classification of species, those who 

 treat of plant-morphology, those who treat of plant-physiology; 

 and in the other the classifiers, the comparative anatomists, the 

 animal-physiologists. More restricted specializations have arisen. 

 Among botanists there are some who study almost exclusively 

 this or that order ; among physiologists, some who commonly 

 take one class of function for their province, and among zoolo- 

 gists there are first of all the divisions into those who are pro- 

 fessed entomologists, ornithologists, ichthyologists, etc., and again 

 within each of these are smaller groups, as among the entomolo- 

 gists, those who study more especially the coleoptera, the lepidop- 

 tera, the hymenoptera, etc. 



Respecting these major and minor differentiations it has only 

 further to be remarked that though the prosecution of science as 

 a whole is not called a profession (the whole being too extensive 

 and heterogeneous), yet the prosecution of this or that part of it 



