94 HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



whom I have spoken. Great collators of results 

 and systematizers of knowledge are a prime 

 necessity of the situation. And they will need 

 the highest faculties which human nature can 

 grow. 



I should not of course commit the absurdity of 

 suggesting that all attempts at improving social 

 conditions should be suspended until we have a 

 more precise knowledge of what their results are 

 likely to be. Practical experiments must go on, 

 and they must needs do something to increase 

 the bounds of our knowledge, whether they are 

 successful or not. But I would venture to urge 

 the great need of more complete organization and 

 better endowment for human studies. 



If the question be asked how these studies may 

 be organized, the answer seems to be that as they 

 develop they will organize themselves, and each 

 branch of the tree will find its due place. In 

 human science as in natural science one cannot 

 cultivate any part of the field without increasing 

 the productiveness of the whole. A man who 

 gives most of his life to the discovery of a new 

 chemical element, and a man who gives most of 

 his life to the examination of the marks on the 

 backs of crabs or to the respiratory organs of frogs 

 are equally the children of science, and workers 

 in the cause of light. In the same way men will 

 equally be of service to historic science whether 

 they study the antiquities of Greece, or the insti- 



