964 ON THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY x 



is now so little known, greatly as it deserves to 

 be studied, " The Leviathan," in order that I 

 may put to you in the wonderfully terse and 

 clear language of Thomas Hobbes, what was 

 his view of the matter. He says : 



" The register of knowledge of fact is called 

 history. Whereof there be two sorts, one called 

 natural history ; which is the history of such facts 

 or effects of nature as have no dependence on 

 man's will ; such as are the histories of metals, 

 plants, animals, regions, and the like. The other 

 is civil history; which is the history of the 

 voluntary actions of men in commonwealths/' 



So that all history of fact was divided into 

 these two great groups of natural and of civil history. 

 The Royal Society was in course of foundation 

 about the time that Hobbes was writing this 

 book, which was published in 1651 ; and that 

 Society was termed a " Society for the Improve- 

 ment of Natural Knowledge," which was then nearly 

 the same thing as a " Society for the Improve- 

 ment of Natural History." As time went on, 

 and the various branches of human knowledge 

 became more distinctly developed and separated 

 from one another, it was found that some were 

 much more susceptible of precise mathematical 

 treatment than others. The publication of the 

 " Principia " of Newton, which probably gave a 

 greater stimulus to physical science than any work 

 ever published before, or which is likely to be 



