SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 



from pole to pole. The tropics and the frigid 

 zones, the highest mountain ranges and the hid- 

 den valleys, the depths of the seas and the 

 interior of the earth, were compelled to give up 

 their secrets. Every unknown territory was in- 

 vaded, and a steady stream of facts began to 

 flow into the studies of the scientists. Soon hun- 

 dreds of thousands of minds and hands were 

 busy accumulating, sifting, classifying evidence, 

 and theorizing on it. One startling discovery 

 after another followed in bewildering succession. 

 It would require volumes to appreciate the merits 

 of even the most remarkable accomplishments of 

 science, in the iQth century, for the formulation 

 of a monistic conception of the world. 



Specialization became an inevitable result of 

 this activity. Among many new departments in 

 science, the igth century gave birth to that 

 specialty, which has done more than any other to 

 bring the nature of the human faculty of under- 

 standing into reach of empirical methods and 

 take away the last mystical ground on which the 

 theory of a supernatural soul rested. That 

 specialty is biology. This term was first em- 

 ployed by Treviranus, who selected for his life's 

 work the creation of a new science, which should 

 study the forms and phenomena of life, its origin, 



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