ADDRESS BEFORE THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 269 



specially interest ordinary humanity, are apart, and that the con- 

 clusions reached in the one have no direct effect in the other. If 

 you acquaint yourself with the history of philosophy, and with the 

 endless variations of human opinion therein recorded, you will find that 

 there is not a single one of those speculative difficulties which at the 

 present time torment many minds as being the direct product of 

 scientific thought, which is not as old as the times of Greek philosophy, 

 and which did not then exist as strongly and as clearly as such diffi- 

 culties exist now, though they arose out of arguments based upon 

 merely philosophical ideas. Whoever admits these two things — as 

 everybody who looks about him must do — whoever takes into account 

 the existence of evil in this world and the law of causation — has be- 

 fore him all the difficulties that can be raised by any form of scientific 

 speculation. And these two difficulties have been occupying the minds 

 of men ever since man began to think. The other consideration I have 

 to put before you is that, whatever may be the results at which physical 

 science, as applied to man shall arrive, those results are inevitable — 

 I mean that they arise out of the necessary progress of scientific thought 

 as applied to man. You all, I hope, had the opportunity of hearing the 

 excellent address which was given by our president yesterday, in which 

 he traced out the marvellous progress of our knowledge of the higher 

 animals which has been effected since the time of Linnaeus. It is no 

 exaggeration to say that at this present time the merest tyro knows a 

 thousand times as much on the subject as is contained in the work of 

 Linnaeus, which was then the standard authority. Now how has that 

 been brought about? If you consider what zoology, or the study of 

 animals, signifies, you will see that it means an endeavor to ascertain 

 all that can be studied, all the answers that can be given respecting 

 any animal under four possible points of view. The first of these 

 embraces considerations of structure. An animal has a certain struc- 

 ture and a certain mode of development, which means that it passes 

 through a series of stages to that structure. In the second place, 

 every animal exhibits a great number of active powers, the knowledge 

 of which constitutes its physiology; and under those active powers 

 we have, as physiologists, not only to include such matters as have been 

 referred to by Dr. McDonnell in his observations, but to take into 

 account other kinds of activity. I see it announced that the zoological 

 section of to-day is to have a highly interesting paper by Sir John 

 Lubbock on the habits of ants. Ants have a policy, and exhibit a 

 certain amount of intelligence, and all these matters are proper subjects 

 for the study of the zoologist as far as he deals with the ant. There 

 is yet a third point of view in which you may regard every animal. 

 It has a distribution. Not only is it to be found somewhere on the 

 earth's surface, but paleontology tells us, if we go back in time, that 



