30 ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 



his successors have landed us in the theory of the per- 

 sistence, or indestructibility, of force. And in the in- 

 finitely minute, as in the infinitely great, the seekers 

 after natural knowledge of the kinds called physical 

 and chemical, have everywhere found a definite order 

 and succession of events which seem never to be in- 

 fringed. 



And how has it fared with "Physick" and Anat- 

 omy? Have the anatomist, the physiologist, or the 

 physician, whose business it has been to devote them- 

 selves assiduously to that eminently practical and direct 

 end, the alleviation of the sufferings of mankind, 

 have they been able to confine their vision more ab- 

 solutely to the strictly useful ? I fear they are the worst 

 offenders of all. For if the astronomer has set before 

 us the infinite magnitude of space, and the practical 

 eternity of the duration of the universe ; if the physical 

 and chemical philosophers have demonstrated the 

 infinite minuteness of its constituent parts, and the 

 practical eternity of matter and of force ; and if both 

 have alike proclaimed the universality of a definite 

 and predicable order and succession of events, the 

 workers in biology have not only accepted all these, 

 but have added more startling theses of their own. 

 For, as the astronomers discover in the earth no cen- 

 tre of the universe, but an eccentric speck, so the natu- 

 ralists find man to be no centre of the living world, 

 but one amidst endless modifications of life; and as 

 the astronomers observe the mark of practically end- 

 less time set upon the arrangements of the solar sys- 

 tem so the student of life finds the records of ancient 

 forms of existence peopling the world for ages, which, 

 in relation to human experience, are infinite. 



Furthermore, the physiologist finds life to be as 



