286 ON LIFE AND ORGANISATION. 



II.— ON LIFE AND OEGANISATION* 



The gradual augmentation f of acquired knowledge is the re- 

 sult of many series of contributions, originally independent, | 

 which, converging as they advance, and coalescing more or 

 less intimately with one another, finally assume their per- 

 mitted positions § in the mass of human knowledge. 



Every subject of investigation, however isolated it may 

 once have been, absorbs in its progress, || and then assimilates, 

 minor collateral inquiries ; and is itself destined to resign its 

 original independence. Certain sciences coalesce easily, and 

 their union is hailed by their cultivators as a triumph of the 

 common cause. Other sciences coalesce with difficulty, and 

 their anticipated union is distasteful to their respective inves- 

 tigators. This difference primarily depends on the necessary 

 existence of fundamentally distinct modes of inquiry in each 

 department of investigation. It depends secondarily on the 

 greater or less difficulty of the final step necessary to effect 

 the union ; and on the comparatively few inquirers who 

 possess either the original or the acquired power of adopting 

 two or more fundamentally distinct modes of investigation in 

 the prosecution of an essentially complex subject. Only such 

 a mind as that of Faraday, which admits of the simultaneous 

 conceptions of the chemist and the physicist, could have 

 guided into one channel the different departments of his 

 varied subject ; and the remarkable results of recent physio- 



* This Lecture was delivered by request to the members of the Royal Medical 

 Society, in their Hall, in 1856, and has not previously been published. — Eds. 

 + Note I. page 299. t Note II. page 300. § Note III. page 300. 



|| Note IV. page 302. 



