THE GROWTH OF BIOLOGY IN THE NINP:TEENTH 



CENTURY/ 



Address before Congress of Scientists at Aachen, .SeptemVjer ] 7, 1900, 



B}^ Oscar HERT^vlG, 



Director of the Analotnical and Biological Institute of the University of Berlin. 



The first of the series of addresses which, upon the close of the cen- 

 tur}^, are to give you a short review of the acquisitions of the natural 

 sciences, treated of a department in which the successes of the scientist 

 have been particularly prominent; for the acquaintance with the 

 forces of nature, which the chemist and phjsicist have earned by 

 investigation in their laboratories, is the starting point for an expert 

 mastery of nature that has reconstructed the life of civilized peoples 

 from its foundation. From unpromising chemical and physical dis- 

 coveries have arisen numerous giant industries, the basis of a commerce 

 on an even more magnificent scale, and various technical contrivances 

 by which men have more and more subjected space and time to their 

 will, flitting by the force of steam, without fatigue, over wide stretches 

 of land, or interchanging their ideas with the speed of lightning over 

 the ocean. 



The honorable task which has fallen to my lot is to report upon the 

 development of biology during the nineteenth century. That science 

 has no such glittering successes to show as those I have mentioned; 

 yet I think I may venture to assert that the knowledge of nature which 

 human sagacity has won even in the realm of biology is not inferior to 

 the discoveries^ and inventions of the chemico-physical sciences in gen- 

 eral scientific importance and in fruitfulness for human civilization. 

 The insight into the complicated laws of nature that govern organisms 

 as well as inorganic bodies, the inquiry into their structure, their origin, 

 their vital processes, their relations to one another and to the cosmos, 

 teaches us to subject the world of living c reatures also to the domination 



1 Translation of Die Entwicklung der Biologie im 19 Jahrhundert. Vortrag auf der 

 Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher zu Aachen am 17 September, 1900, gehalten 

 von Oscar Hertwig, Director des anatomisch-biologischen Instituts der Berlmer Um- 

 versitat. Jena. Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1900. ^^^ 



