PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S LECTURES. 43 



times its worth in useful experience, directly benefiting the would-be 

 benefactor. We do not overlook the fact that many mothers, particu- 

 larly among those both educated and fruitful, pay the closest atten- 

 tion to these questions, and become expert therein, but, as they lack 

 the means of record and transmission of their observations, their ex- 

 perience dies, so to speak, with each generation. Hence the nursing 

 of babies continues to be a work of devotion, but does not become 

 the coordinated and progressive art it ought to be in well-organized 

 creches open to criticism in public exhibitions. Thus in Vienna, at 

 least, an opportunity was lost. 



-**- 



PKOFESSOK HUXLEY'S LECTURES. 1 



THE THREE HYPOTHESES OF THE HISTORY OF NATURE. 



WE live and form part of a system of things of immense diver- 

 sity and perplexity, which we call Nature, and it is a matter 

 of the deepest interest to all of us that we should form just concep- 

 tions of the constitution of that system and of its past history. With 

 relation to this universe, man is, in extent, little nipre than a mathe- 

 matical point ; in duration, but a fleeting shadow. He is a reed shaken 

 in the winds of force ; but, as Pascal long ago remarked, although a 

 reed, he is a thinking reed, and, in virtue of that wonderful capacity 

 of thought, he has a power of framing to himself a symbolic concep- 

 tion of the universe, which, although doubtless highly imperfect, and 

 although wholly inadequate as a picture of that great whole, is yet 

 sufficient to serve him as a guide-book in his practical affairs. It has 

 taken Ions; asres of accumulated and often fruitless labor to enable 

 man to look steadily at the. shifting scenes, phantasmagoria of Na- 

 ture, to notice what is fixed among her fluctuations, and what is regu- 

 lar among her apparent irregularities ; and it is only comparatively 

 lately, within the last few centuries, that there has emerged the con- 

 ception of a pervading order and a definite course of things, which 

 we term the course of Nature. 



But out of this contemplation of Nature, and out of man's thought 

 concerning her, there has in these later times arisen that conception 

 of the constancy of Nature to which I have referred, and which at 

 length has become the guiding conception of modern thought. It has 

 ceased to be almost conceivable to any person who is familiar with 



1 The first of three lectures on " The Direct Evidence of Evolution," delivered at 

 Chickering Hall, New York, September 18th. From the report of the New York Tribune, 

 carefully revised by Prof. Huxley. 



