560 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



supplied the plastic materials of physiology as well as the plastic 

 exudates of pathology. Such was the basis of the new biological 

 method, if one can apply such an expression to a still incomplete 

 doctrine, in 1842, when Huxley was beginning his medical studies at 

 Charing Cross Hospital. It would lead too far afield were I to recount 

 in this place how it happened that I myself, like Huxley, was early 

 weaned from the pernicious doctrines of humoral pathology. 



The Development of Biology. 

 When Huxley himself left Charing Cross Hospital, in 1846, he had 

 enjoyed a rich measure of instruction in anatomy and physiology. 

 Thus trained, he took the post of naval surgeon, and by the time that 

 he returned, four years later, he had become a perfect zoologist and a 

 keen-sighted ethnologist. How this was possible anyone will readily 

 understand who knows from his own experience how great the value 

 of personal observation is for the development of independent and 

 unprejudiced thought. For a young man who, besides collecting a 

 rich treasure of positive knowledge, has practiced dissection and the 

 exercise of a critical judgment, a long sea voyage and a peaceful sojourn 

 among entirely new surroundings afford an invaluable opportunity for 

 original work and deep reflection. Freed from the formalism of the 

 schools, thrown upon the use of his own intellect, compelled to test 

 each single object as regards properties and history, he soon forgets 

 the dogmas of the prevailing system and becomes first a skeptic and 

 then an investigator. This change, which did not fail to affect Huxley, 

 and through which arose that Huxley whom we commemorate to-day, 

 is no unknown occurrence to one who is acquainted with the history 

 not only of knowledge, but also of scholars. We need only to point to 

 John Hunter and Darwin as closely allied examples. The path on 

 which these men have achieved their triumphs is that which biology in 

 general has trodden with ever-widening strides since the end of last 

 century — it is the path of genetic investigation. We Germans point 

 with pride to our countryman who opened up this road with full con- 

 viction of its importance, and who directed toward it the eyes of the 

 world — our poet-prince Goethe. What he accomplished in particular 

 from plants others of our fellow-countrymen achieved from animals — 

 Wolf, Meckel, and our whole embryological school. As Harvey, Haller, 

 and Hunter had once done, so these men began also with the study of 

 the 'ovulum,' but this very soon showed that the egg was itself 

 organized, and that from it arose the whole series of organic develop- 

 ments. When Huxley, after his return, came to publish his funda- 

 mental observations, he found the history of the progressive trans- 

 formations of the contents of the egg already verified, for it was by 

 now known that the egg was a cell, and that from it fresh cells and 



