X ON THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY 293 



recommending him to go through a course of 

 comparative anatomy and physiology, and then to 

 study development. I am sorry to say he was 

 very much displeased, as people often are with 

 good advice. Notwithstanding this discouraging 

 result, I venture, as a parting word, to repeat the 

 suggestion, and to say to all the more or less 

 acute lay and clerical " paper-philosophers " l 

 who venture into the regions of biological 

 controversy Get a little sound, thorough, prac- 

 tical, elementary instruction in biology. 



1 Writers of this stamp are fond of talking about the Baconian 

 method. I beg them therefore to lay to heart these two weighty 

 sayings of the herald of ^Modern Science : 



" Syllogismus ex propositionibus constat, propositiones ex 

 verbis, verba notionum tesserae sunt. Itaque si notiones ipsse 

 (id quod basis rci est] confusae sint et temere a rebus abstracts, 

 nihil in iis quae superstruuntur est firmitudinis. " Novum 

 Organon y ii. 14. 



" Huic autem vanitati nonnulli ex modernis summa 'evitato 

 ita indulserunt, ut in primo capitulo Geneseos et in libro -Tob et 

 aliis scrip turis sacris, philosophiam naturalem fund are couati 

 Rint ; inter vivos qu&rentes morhia." Ibid. 66. 



