38 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [v 



tion of living beings one to another — the science which 

 observes men — whose experiments are made by nations 

 one upon another, in battle-fields — whose general propo- 

 sitions are embodied in history, morality, and religion — 

 whose deductions lead to our happiness or our misery, 

 —and whose verifications so often come too late, and 

 serve only 



"To point a moral or adorn a tale" — 



I mean the science of Society or Sociology. 



I think it is one of the grandest features of Biology, 

 that it occupies this central position in human know- 

 ledge. There is no side of the human mind which 

 physiological study leaves uncultivated. Connected by 

 innumerable ties with abstract science, Physiology is yet 

 in the most intimate relation with humanity ; and by 

 teaching us that law and order, and a definite scheme 

 of development, regulate even the strangest and wildest 

 manifestations of individual life, she prepares the student 

 to look for a goal even amidst the erratic wanderings of 

 mankind, and to believe that history offers something 

 more than an entertaining chaos — a journal of a toilsome, 

 tra<ri-comic march nowhither. 



The preceding considerations have, I hope, served to 

 indicate the replies which befit the two first of the 

 questions which I set before you at starting, viz. what is 

 the range and position of Physiological Science as a 

 branch of knowledge, and what is its value as a means 

 of mental discipline. 



Its subject-matter is a large moiety of the universe — 

 its position is midway between the physico-chemical and 

 the social sciences. Its value as a branch of discipline 

 is partly that which it has in common with all sciences — 

 the training and strengthening of common sense ; partly 

 that which is more peculiar to itself — the great exercise 



