ON BIOLOGY. 99 



are: "We seek the truth and the truth only." Such 

 being the broad field of its operations; such its progress; 

 and such its aims, it can easily be conceived by all who 

 care or have the power to raise themselves in their 

 stirrups and scan the unexplored domain that lies in the 

 way of this column's advance, or those who may be found 

 there in that territory to meet it, what its influence must 

 be in the future, both the most immediate future, and 

 that future which shall close the career of man upon 

 earth. 



Truth must and ever will powerfully prevail; and when 

 truth is brought in collision with those human opinions, 

 those human institutions, those human ideas which can- 

 not bear the full blaze of her scrutiny, there can be but 

 one fate for them all they are completely overcome, and 

 thereafter, in their disarmed state, can but forever stand 

 aside, as beacons of human experience, to pass down into 

 human history as perpetual warnings of the danger to 

 man's progress, that danger which is ever represented by 

 erroneous ideas and by those practices uoguided by the 

 knowledge of truth and the knowledge of fact. 



Nations and governments do feel now and must feel 

 still more in the future the influence of this advance in 

 natural knowledge, for nations are made up of individ- 

 uals, and when truth pervades the part it must eventu- 

 ally pervade the whole. But nations have nothing to 

 fear from such quarters, and onlv benefit can follow, 

 benefit which must come in the light of the knowledge of 

 man's true place in Nature, his relations to the universe 

 at large, and finally, how his life, his happiness, his 

 career, and his material progress is completely under the 

 sway of those natural laws that in common affect both 

 the earth and every living organism uoon it. Similarly, 

 all of man's social and educational institutions must be 

 influenced for the better through the same means in the 

 future. Art will receive her impress, for much in art is 

 a reproduction of what we see in Nature, and if it be that 

 the artist cannot read Nature aright his erroneous ideas 

 of her will, of a certainty, make their appearance in his 

 work. 



Throughout this course of lectures several opportuni- 

 ties have been taken to point out what a profound influ- 

 ence biological progress must exert upon the profession 

 of medicine in the future, and this must be sufficiently 

 clear, inasmuch as morphology and physiology lie at the 

 very base of that science. 'A moment's reflection is alone 

 necessary to appreciate how the same influence will con- 



