ON THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY. 535 



wonder what a scholar would say to the man who should undertake 

 to criticise a difficult passage in a Greek play, but who obviously had 

 not acquainted himself with the rudiments of the Greek grammar. 

 And, before giving a positive opinion about these high questions of 

 biology, people not only don't seem to think it necessary to be ac- 

 quainted with the grammar of the subject, but they have not even 

 mastered the alphabet. You find criticism and denunciation show T ered 

 about by persons who not only have not attempted to go through the 

 discipline necessary to enable them to be judges, but have not even 

 reached that stage of emergence from ignorance in which the knowl- 

 edge that such a discipline is necessary dawns upon the mind. I have 

 had to watch with some attention in fact, I have been favored with 

 a good deal of it myself the sort of criticism with which biologists 

 and biological doctrines are visited. I am told every now and then 

 that there is a " brilliant article " ' in so-and-so, in which we are all 

 demolished. I used to read these things once, but I am getting old, 

 and I have ceased to attend very much to this cry of " wolf! " When 

 one does read one of these productions, what one finds generally, on 

 the face of it, is, that the brilliant critic is devoid of even the ele- 

 ments of knowledge in the matter, and that his brilliancy is like the 

 light given out by the crackling of thorns under a pot of which Solo- 

 mon speaks. So far as I recollect, Solomon makes use of that image 

 for purposes of comparison ; but I won't proceed into that matter 

 further. 



Two things must be obvious : in the first place, that every man 

 who has the interests of truth at heart must earnestly desire that every 

 well-founded and just criticism that can be made should be made ; but 

 it is essential to anybody's being able to benefit by criticism that the 

 critic should know what he is talking about and be in a position to 

 form a mental image of the facts symbolized by the word he uses. If 

 not, it is as obvious in the case of a biological argument as it is in 

 that of an historical or philological discussion, that such criticism is 

 a mere waste of time on the part of the author, and wholly undeserv- 

 ing of attention on the part of those who are criticised. Take it, 

 then, as an illustration of the importance of biological study that 

 thereby alone are men able to form something like a rational concep- 

 tion of what constitutes valuable criticism of the teachings of biolo- 

 gists. 3 



1 Galileo was troubled by a sort of people whom he called " paper-philosophers," be- 

 cause they fancied that the true reading of Nature was to be detected by the collation of 

 texts. The race is not extinct, but, as of old, brings forth its " winds of doctrine " by 

 which the weathercock-heads among us are much exercised. 



5 Some critics do not even take the trouble to read. I have recently been adjured 

 with much solemnity to state publicly why I have " changed " my opinion as to the value 

 of the paleontological evidence of the occurrence of evolution. 



To this my reply is, Why should I, when that statement was made seven years ago ? 

 An address delivered from the presidential chair of the Geological Society in 1870 may 



