ON BIOLOGY. 61 



are liable. Moreover, the investigations in those fields 

 have again reacted, and to the end of still further 

 elucidating a number of the more complex problems in 

 human pathology. Surely there is no one among us 

 to-day who for a moment doubts the value of the biologi- 

 cal researches that are now almost hourly being made 

 upon the structure and life-histories of myriads of germs 

 that cause disease; or of the value of the labors of the 

 world's "corps of patient biologists who are continually 

 engaged in furnishing us with a fuller understanding of 

 the morphology and physiology of those structures which 

 those many species of germs are prone to attack. Such 

 studies are most assuredly fraught with results of great 

 practical value, and are of the very highest importance. 

 Justice to this subject could hardly be attained to in an 

 entire course of lectures, and the interesting field it 

 covers is reflected in an extremely rich and varied 

 literature. 



Again, the value of the most exhaustive researches in 

 general morphology can hardly be questioned; for, in the 

 first place, as I have just shown, they not only have the 

 great practical value of elucidating the more obscure 

 points in man's own organization, but through the enor- 

 mous array of facts arrived at, biologists have been 

 enabled to fix beyond all peradventure of a doubt the po- 

 sition man occupies in Nature and his true relation to the 

 universe at large. This has had the effect of completely 

 explpding that old traditional notion, that ancient myth, 

 the embodiment of the idea that man constituted the 

 great central figure in Nature, and held a position alto- 

 geth'er peculiar; that structurally, physiologically, men- 

 tally and psychologically he was completely disassociated 

 from all the rest of the living forms of this world; indeed, 

 that he was hardly of this world at all, but was to be 

 considered as simply a being existing here only tempo- 

 rarily and but very remotely related co any and all things 

 of earth, upon which he had but recently come and upon 

 which his race expected to sojourn as probationers but a 

 comparatively brief time; and, finally, what was more or 

 quite as erroneous as all the rest of this strange tradi- 

 tional notion put together, that, somehow or other, he 

 thus being apart from Nature all the rest of the world 

 had been especially created either for his personal bene- 

 fit; or as affording him an array of natural objects for hi 

 especial amusement; or for, as I say, a temporary abiding 

 place, tastefully fitted up, to answer as a habitation dur- 

 ing his brief sojourn upon the earth. Biological research 



