x ON THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY 293 



recommending him to go through a course of 

 comparative anatomy and physiology, and then to 

 study development. I am sorry to say he was 

 very much displeased, as people often are with 

 good advice. Notwithstanding this discouraging 

 result, I venture, as a parting word, to repeat the 

 suggestion, and to say to all the more or less 

 acute lay and clerical " paper-philosophers " l 

 who venture into the regions of biological 

 controversy Get a little sound, thorough, prac- 

 tical, elementary instruction in biology. 



1 Writers of this stamp are fond of talking about the Baconian 

 method. I beg them therefore to lay to heart these two weighty 

 sayings of the herald of Modern Science : 



" Syllogisnms ex propositionibus constat, propositiones ex 

 verbis, verba notionum tessera snnt. Itaque si notiones ipsae 

 (id quod basis rei est) confusse sint et temere a rebus abstractse, 

 nihil in iis quse superstruuntur est firmitudinis. " Novum 

 Organon, ii. 14. 



" Huic autem vanitati nonnulli ex modernis summa levitate 

 ita indulserunt, ut in primo capitulo Geneseos et in libro Job et 

 ;iliis scripturis sacris, philosophiam naturalem fundare conati 

 siut ; inter vivos qucerentes mortua." Ibid. 65. 



