PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY 307 



usus humanos ; the study of which has for its objects * the 

 prolongation of life or the retardation of age, the curing of 

 diseases counted incurable, the mitigation of pain, the making 

 of new species and transplanting of one species into another,' 

 and so on through many more. Assuredly, I have no need 

 to remind you that a great feature of this generation of ours 

 has been the way in which Biology has been justified of her 

 children, in the work of those who have studied the magnalia 

 naturae, quoad usus humanos. 



But so far are biologists from being nowadays engrossed 

 in practical questions, in applied and technical zoology, to 

 the neglect of its more recondite problems, that there never 

 was a time when men thought more deeply or laboured with 

 greater zeal over the fundamental phenomena of living things ; 

 never a time when they reflected in a broader spirit over such 

 questions as purposive adaptation, the harmonious working 

 of the fabric of the body in relation to environment, and the 

 interplay of all the creatures that people the earth ; over 

 the problems of heredity and variation ; over the mysteries 

 of sex, and the phenomena of generation and reproduction, 

 by which phenomena, as the wise woman told, or reminded, 

 Socrates, and as Harvey said again (and for that matter, as 

 Coleridge said, and Weismann, but not quite so well), by 

 which, as the wise old woman said, we gain our glimpse of 

 insight into eternity and immortality. These, then, together 

 with the problem of the Origin of Species, are indeed magnalia 

 naturae, ; and I take it that inquiry into these, deep and 

 wide research specially directed to the solution of these, is 

 characteristic of the spirit of our time, and is the password 

 of the younger generation of biologists. 



Interwoven with this high aim which is manifested in the 

 biological work of recent years, is another tendency. It is 

 the desire to bring to bear upon our science, in greater measure 

 than before, the methods and results of the other sciences, 



