30 HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



in this alone. And what was true for part of man 

 he claimed to be true for the whole of man. 

 Man's whole nature, and not simply this or that 

 part of it, was subject to natural laws; and the 

 welfare of the whole, no less than of each part, 

 was to be sought in obedience to these laws. As 

 the path to so-called physical health lay in the 

 strenuous search after physiological laws, and in 

 obeying them when found, so the path to moral 

 and social health lay in a like search after ethical 

 and social laws and in a like obedience to them 

 when found. He met with no one who contended 

 that because at the present day our knowledge of 

 physiological laws is fragmentary and halting it 

 is to be set aside as of no avail for the conduct of 

 life in its physical aspects; on the contrary, he 

 met everywhere with urgent demands for vigorous 

 research, prompted by the sure conviction that a 

 fuller knowledge would bring to us the means of 

 securing a more wholesome physical life. And 

 he argued that the fact of our knowledge of 

 ethical and social laws being still more fragmen- 

 tary and halting than our knowledge of physio- 

 logical laws so fragmentary and so halting, 

 indeed, that the ethical and social knowledge of 

 to-day might be compared with the physiological 

 knowledge of centuries ago was no valid argu- 

 ment for refusing to accept that knowledge as the 

 ultimate guide in the conduct of life. On the. 

 contrary, it seemed to him that this constituted 

 the very reason why the most strenuous efforts 



