27S ON THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY x 



rudiments of Greek grammar. And vet, before 

 giving positive opinions about these high ques- 

 tions of Biology, people not only do not seem 

 to think it necessary to be acquainted with the 

 grammar of the subject, but they have not even 

 mastered the alphabet. You find criticism and 

 denunciation showered about by persons who not 

 only have not attempted to go through the dis- 

 cipline necessary to enable them to be judges, but 

 M'ho have not even reached that stage of emer- 

 gence from ignorance in which the knowledge 

 that such a discipline is necessary dawns upon the 

 mind. I have had to watch with some atten- 

 tion — in fact I have been favoured with a good 

 deal of it myself — the sort of criticism with which 

 biologists and biological teachings are visited. I 

 am told every now and then that there is a " bril- 

 liant article " * in so-and-so, in which we are all 

 demolished. I used to read these things once, but 

 I am getting old now, and I have ceased to at- 

 tend very much to this cry of " wolf." A\'lien one 

 does read any of these productions, what one finds 

 generally, on the face of it is, that the brilliant 

 critic is devoid of even the elements of biolosx- 

 ical knowledge, and that his brilliancy is like 



* Galileo was trouliled by a sort of people whom he 

 called " jja{)er philosophers,'' because they fancied that the 

 true reading of nature was to be detected by the collation 

 of texts. The race is not extinc t, but. as of old, brings forth 

 its "winds of doctrine" by rshich the weathercock heads 

 among us are much exercised. 



