PRESENT PROBLEMS OF PHYSIOLOGY 429 



finds in them but little to encourage his hopes of a more rapid 

 advance in knowledge. While many protest against the inadequacy 

 of our present methods, the progress that is actually being made 

 is accomplished, as formerly, by those who adhere to the tried 

 method of experimenting continually in every direction. So far as 

 I can see, it is still the duty of the physiologist to insist upon the 

 necessity and value of empirical work. What we need is not so 

 much philosophical theories as new experimental methods, and 

 these will be discovered only by those who, trained in the technique 

 of the subject, are continually attempting to modify and improve 

 existing methods. Physiology needs a Pasteur rather than a Des- 

 cartes. It is possible that the sciences of physics and chemistry, 

 being so much farther advanced than that of physiology, may 

 feel acutely the need of reconstructing their philosophical basis 

 in order that their working hypotheses may better adapt them- 

 selves to future experimental work, but in physiology the guiding 

 principles which we have received from these sciences still hold 

 out richest possibilities of results, and we have not within the 

 limits of our own subject reached that degree of development which 

 calls for a fundamental change in methods or theory. While de- 

 precating, therefore, in the strongest possible way any effort to 

 minimize the importance of the experimental work as now car- 

 ried on in physiology, it seems to me, nevertheless, quite evident 

 that some value must be given also to the character of the general 

 philosophical idea upon which this work is based. The purely 

 agnostic point of view is suited, perhaps, to individual minds; and 

 where our ignorance is so great the empirical attitude is doubtless 

 the most modest, and theoretically the most justifiable. But hu- 

 man nature is such that an entirely neutral and judicial stand- 

 point fails to arouse in it much enthusiasm or strenuous endeavor. 

 In science we need enthusiasm, for much work is to be done, and 

 scientists as a body, like their fellow mortals, are not content to 

 hold themselves aloof from speculations regarding the final object 

 and significance of their labors. The nature of the underlying phil- 

 osophical belief has always had an important influence upon the 

 extent and character of scientific work, and we must take this factor 

 into our reckoning in any attempt to estimate the conditions that 

 contribute to the advance or to the retrogression of science. 



Toward the middle of the nineteenth century magnificent work 

 in physiology was being done in Germany and in France. The 

 methods that were employed by Flourens, Magendie, and Bernard 

 were as productive and as modern as those used by their contem- 

 poraries in Germany, but the influence of the latter school was 

 seemingly more widespread, if we may judge this influence by the 

 effect upon the entire body of investigators in physiology. Recent 



