70 BIOLOGY AND THE STATE II 



of the last century into a saver of life and health. 

 (See Appendix A.) 



No less has the same ao^ency revolutionised the 

 thoughts of men in every branch of philosophy and 

 speculation. The knowledge of the growth of the 

 chick from the ^gg and of other organisms from simi- 

 larly constituted beginnings has been slowly and con- 

 tinuously gained by prodigious labour, extending over 

 generation after generation of students who have 

 occupied the laboratories and lived on the stipends 

 provided by the Governments of European States — 

 not English, but chiefly German. It is this history 

 of the development of the individual animal and plant 

 from a simple homogeneous beginning to a complex 

 heterogeneous adult which has furnished the starting- 

 point for the wide -reaching Doctrine of Evolution. 

 It is this knowledge, coupled with the knowledge of 

 the myriad details of structure of all kinds of animals 

 and plants which the faithful occupants of laboratories 

 and the guardians of biological collections have in 

 the past hundred years laboriously searched out and 

 recorded — it is this which enabled Darwin to propound, 

 to test, and to firmly establish his theory of the origin 

 of species by natural selection, and finally to bring the 

 origin, development, and progress of man also into 

 the area of physical science. I have said enough, in 

 referring only to two very diverse examples of the 

 far-reaching consequences flowing from the discoveries 

 of single-minded investigators in biological science, 

 to remind my hearers that in the domain of biology, 

 as in other sciences, the results attained by those w^ho 



