i8 HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



another way, and which furnish the subject-matter 

 of the science of physiology. Further, every 

 living being may be studied from the point of 

 view of how it came to be, how it is related to other 

 beings, and what part it plays in the general 

 economy of nature. Biology is thus split up into 

 several branches, several more or less inde- 

 pendent sciences, and the man who looks forward 

 to advancing knowledge in any one of them finds, 

 and finds increasingly as knowledge advances, 

 that he must narrow his efforts to one of them, 

 or even to a part, perhaps a small part, of that. 

 And the temptation is natural and strong for the 

 learner to turn to the narrowing early, even per- 

 haps at the beginning, pursuing his narrow path 

 from the outset in ignorance of what is going on 

 around him. Yet these several sciences, these 

 several branches of biology, are not really and 

 wholly independent : they touch each other, here 

 and there, again and again. Hence Huxley 

 and all of us, I venture to think, will agree that 

 he was right maintained that, necessary as it 

 may be for the student to narrow his outlook 

 when he is well on his way, he will work all the 

 more fruitfully, gaining results of all the higher 

 value if, before passing through the straight gate 

 to his ultimate narrow path, he gets to know what 

 other paths there are, what are their features, and 

 whither they lead. Hence he introduced a teach- 

 ing of biology, in which as many as possible of all 

 kinds of biological problems, and not one kind 



