446 



NATURE 



\AugUSt 2 2, 1878 



department. In the Geological Section I have no doubt it will 

 be pointed out to you, or, at any rate, such knowledge may 

 crop up incidentally, that there are on the earth's surface what 

 are called loci of disturbance, where, for long ages, cataclysms 

 and outbursts of lava and the like take place. Then everything 

 subsides into quietude ; but a similar disturbance is set up else- 

 -where. In Antrim, at the middle of the tertiary epoch, there 

 -was such a great centre of physical disturbance. We all know 

 that at the present time the earth's crust, at any rate, is quiet in 

 Antrim, while the great centres of local disturbance are in 

 Sicily, in Southern Italy, in the Andes, and elrewhere. My 

 experience of the British Association does not extend quite over a 

 geological epoch, but it does go back rather longer than I care to 

 think about ; and when I first knew the British Association, the 

 iocus of disturbance in it was the Geological Section, All sorts 

 of terrible things about the antiquity of the earth, and I know 

 not what else, were being said there, which gave rise to terrible 

 apprehensions. The whole world, it was thought, was coming 

 to an end, just as I have no doubt that, if there were any 

 buman inhabitants of Antrim in the middle of the tertiary 

 epoch, when those great lava streams burst out, they would not 

 have had the smallest question that the whole universe was 

 going to pieces. Well, the universe has not gone to pieces. 

 Antrim is, geologically speaking, a very quiet place now, as 

 well cultivated a place as one need see, and yielding abundance 

 of excellent produce ; and so, if we turn to the Geological Sec- 

 tion, nothing can be milder than the proceedings of that admir- 

 able body. All the difficulties that they seemed to have en- 

 countered at first have died away, and statements that were the 

 horrible paradoxes of that generation are now the commonplaces 

 of schoolboys. At present the Icnis of disturbance is to be 

 found in the Biological Section, and more particularly in the 

 anthropological department of that Section. History repeats 

 itself, and precisely the same terrible apprehensions which were 

 expressed by the aborigines of the Geological Section, in long 

 far back time, is at present expressed by those who attend our 

 deliberations. The world is coming to an end, the basis of 

 morality is being shaken, and I don't know what is not to 

 happen if certain conclusions which appear probable are to be 

 verified. Well, now, whoever may be here thirty years hence — 

 I certainly cannot — but, depend upon it, whoever may be speak- 

 ing at the meeting of this department of the British Association 

 thirty years hence will find, exactly as the members of the Geo- 

 logical Section have found, on looking back thirty years, that 

 the very paradoxes and conclusions, and other horrible things 

 that are now thought to be going to shake the foundations of the 

 world will by that time have become parts of every-day know- 

 ledge and will be taught in our schools as accepted truth, and 

 nobody will be one whit the worse. 



The considerations which I think it desirable to put before 

 you in order to show the foundations of the conclusions at 

 which I have very confidently arrived, are of two kinds. The 

 first is a reason based entirely upon philosophical considerations, 

 namely, this — that the region of pure physical science, and the 

 region of those questions which specially interest ordinary 

 humanity, are apart, and that the conclusions reached in the 

 one have no direct effect in the other. If you acquaint yourself 

 with the history of philosophy, and with the endless variations 

 of human opinion therein recorded, you will find that there 

 is not a single one of those specula:ive difficulties which 

 at the present time torment many minds as being the 

 direct product of scientific thought, which is not as 

 old as the times of Greek philosophy, and which did 

 not then exist as strongly and as clearly as they do now, 

 though they arose out of arguments based upon merely 

 philosophical ideas. Whoever admits these two things — as 

 everybody who looks about him must do — whoever takes^into 

 account the existence of evil in this world and the law of causa- 

 tion — has before him all the difficulties that can be raised by any 

 form of scientific speculation. And these two difficulties have 

 been occupying the minds of men ever since man began to think. 

 The other consideration I have to put before you is that, what- 

 ever may be the results at which physical science as applied to 

 man shall arrive, those results are inevitable —I mean that they 

 arise out of the necessary progress of scientific thought as 

 applied to man. You all, I hope, had the opportunity of hear- 

 ing the excellent address which was given by our president 

 yesterday, in which he traced out the marvellous progress of our 

 knowledge of the higher animals which has been effected since 

 the time of Linnaeus. It is no exaggeration to say that at this 



present time the merest tyro knows a thousand times as much 

 on the subject as is contained in the work of Linnoeus, which 

 was then the standard authority. Now how has that been 

 brought about? If you consider what zoology, or the study 

 of animals, signifies, you will see that it means an endeavour 

 to ascertain all that can be studied, all the answers that 

 can be given respecting any animal under four possible 

 points of view. The first of these embraces considerations 

 of structure. An animal has a certain structure, a certain 

 mode of development, which means a series of stages in that 

 structure. In the second place, every animal exhibits a great 

 number of active powers, the knowledge of which constitutes 

 its physiology ; and under those active powers we have, as 

 physiologists, not only to include such matters as have been 

 referred to by Dr. M'Donnell in his observations, but to take 

 into account other kinds of activity. I see it announced that 

 the Zoological Section of to-day is to have a highly interesting 

 paper by Sir John Lubbock on the habits of ants. Ants have 

 a polity, and exhibit a certain amount of intelligence, and all 

 these matters are proper subjects for the study of the zoologist as 

 far as he deals with the ant. There is yet a third point of view 

 in which you may regard every animal. It has a distribution. 

 Not only is it to be found somewhere on the earth's surface, but 

 palaeontology tells u-, if we go back in time, that the great 

 majority of animals have had a past history — that they occurred 

 in epochs of the world's history far removed from the present. 

 And when we have acquired all that knowledge which we may enu- 

 merate under the heads of anatomy, physiology, and distribution, 

 there remains still the problem of problems to the zoologist, 

 which is the study of the causes of those phenomena, in order 

 that we may know how those things came ab,ut. All these 

 different forms of knowledge and inquiry are legitimate 

 subjects for science, there being no subject which is an illegitimate 

 subject for scientific inquiry, except such as involves a contradic- 

 tion in terms, or is itself absurd. Indeed, I don't know that I 

 ought to go quite so far as this at prtsent, for, undoubtedly, 

 there are many benighted persons who have been in the habit of 

 calling by no less hard names conceptions which our president 

 tells us must be regarded with much respect. If we have four 

 dimensions of space we may have forty dimensions, and that 

 would be a long way beyond that which is conceivable by 

 ordinary powers of imagination. I should, therefore, not like 

 to draw too closely the limits as to what may be contradiction 

 to the best established principles. Now, let us turn to a pro- 

 position which no one can possibly deny — namely, that there is 

 a distinct sense in which man is an animal. There is not the 

 smallest doubt of that proposition. If anybody entertains a 

 misgiving on that point he has simply to walk through the 

 museum close by in order to see that man has a structure and a 

 framework which may be compared, point for point and bone 

 for bone, with those of the lower animals. There is not the 

 smallest doubt moreover that, as to the manner of his becoming, 

 man is developed, step by step, in exactly the same way as they 

 are. There is not the smallest doubt that his activities— not 

 only his mere bodily functions, but his other functions— are just 

 as much the subjects of scientific study as are those of ants or 

 bees. What we call the phenomena of intelligence, for example 

 (as to what else there may be in them, the anthropologist makes 

 no assertion) — are phenomena following a definite causal order 

 just as capable of scientific examination, and of being reduced to 

 definite law, as are all those phenomena which we call physical. 

 And just as ants form a polity and a social state, and just as 

 these are the proper and legitimate study of the zoologist, so far 

 as he deals with ants, so do men organise themselves into a 

 social state, and though the province of politics is of course out- 

 side that of anthropology, yet the consideration of man, so far 

 as his instincts lead him to construct a social economy, is a legiti- 

 mate and proper part of anthropology, precisely in the same way 

 as the study of the social state of ants is a legitimate object of 

 zoology. So with regard to other and more subtle phenomena. 

 It has often been disputed whether in animals there is any trace 

 of the religious sentiment. That is a legitimate subject of dis- 

 pute and of inquiry ; and if it were possible for my friend Sir 

 John Lubbock to point out to you that ants manifest such senti- 

 ments he would have made a very great and interesting discovery, 

 and no one could doubt that the ascertainment of such a fact 

 was completely within the province of zoology. Anthropology 

 has nothino- to' do with the truth or falsehood of religion— it 

 holds itself absolutely and entirely aloof from such questions— 

 but the natural history of religion, and the orij;in and the 



