204 HISTORY OF OUR SOCIETY. 
how much the general advance of the doctrine of evolution 
has formulated the daily affairs of life upon a scientific 
basis, and made not merely individuals scientific, but the 
whole intelligent mass of society so. Just as much as 
the advance of scientific workers has so interested and 
benefited the practical manufacturer, that he instinctively 
follows on the lines laboriously worked out by the student, 
and thus himself becomes a scientific worker, so gradually 
will every interest in life tend to be shaped on the lines 
which the scientific worker indicates as correct. 
For many years the pleasure of collecting, classifying. 
and comparing specimens, was to me all-satisfying, but now 
I feel there are greater pleasures to be obtained in the 
pursuit of science. Interesting, and in some instances, 
valuable as it may be, I do not xow want to discuss rare 
trilobites, new varieties of oak-fern, or even the exact atomic 
weight of Argon, and I do not much care if the Charnwood 
Forest Rocks are Cambrian or pre-Cambrian, but I do 
want to know what it all means and what my actual rela- 
tionship to it all is; of course I am fully aware that it is 
only by the accumulation of an enormous number of facts, 
such as I have referred to, and the accompanying classifi 
cation, &c., that it is possible for us to obtain that 
information which I now feel to be the more interesting. 
I am however sure, that what was seen but dimly as 
through a cloud, when this Society was formed, can now 
be demonstrated to be a very definite and a very beautiful 
design, and that wonderful all-embracing theory, Evolution, 
is the magnifying glass or cloud-dispeller which enables us 
to piece together the enormous number of facts and obser- 
vations before referred to, and to see how marvellously 
interwoven is the whole fabric of the universe, and how 
essential and yet insignificant a portion of it is each one of 
us. 
ea 
a 
