THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY. 25 



of the unscientific, if not to that of the impious as well. But con- 

 siderations of theoretical impiety have no effect in face of the need 

 for knowledge. If the speculation how any planet was framed, and if 

 the formation of a nebular hypothesis, or the promulgation of a theory 

 of elliptical orbits, was a warrantable procedure nay, even a 

 necessity of astronomical knowledge, one may well be excused for 

 failing to discover the unwarrantableness of speculation concerning 

 ithe origin of animals and plants. Especially, too, if the way of crea- 

 tion, as biological science believes, has not been through successive 

 acts of supernatural interference with the matter of life and the manner 

 of living, but through the modification slow, gradual, natural, and pro- 

 longed of pre-existing species, the justification for the query, "How 

 has this animal or that plant assumed its form and place in the world?" 

 lies on the face of nature itself. If, as is apparent to all biologists 

 at least, the way of creation is traceable in the forms and develop- 

 ments of living beings, we are bound to investigate that history, as a 

 part of the duty laid upon scientific truth- seeking and upon biological 

 investigation. 



The impiety so much talked of in past years, but of which one 

 happily hears but little now, if it exists at all, is illustrated solely 

 in the absolute scepticism of those who refuse to admit and believe 

 in the right of man to read and construe, as reason dictates, the 

 records written in the fair face of creation itself. Persons who 

 deem it impious in the scientist to assert that he can trace the evo- 

 lution of this animal or that plant, present the best possible frame of 

 mind for the development of the very scepticism the existence of 

 which they are the first to deplore. The wilful folding of the hands in 

 deprecation of scientific investigation, and the shutting of the eyes in a 

 so-called " orthodox " and slumbering ignorance of the facts of nature, 

 is the procedure of all others best calculated to sap the foundations 

 of religion itself. It is such ideas which Dr. Martineau, with his 

 accustomed ability, has ably denounced when he says, " What, indeed, 

 have we found by moving out along all radii into the Infinite ? that 

 the whole is woven together in one sublime tissue of intellectual 

 relations, geometric and physical the realised original, of which all 

 our science is but the partial copy. That science is the crowning 

 product and supreme expression of human reason. . . Unless, there- 

 fore, it takes more mental faculty to construe a universe than to cause 

 it, to read the Book of Nature than to write it, we must more than 

 -ever look upon its sublime face as the living appeal of thought to 

 thought." These are words worth reflecting upon ; and they certainly 

 admit from the side of liberal theology the full, free, and unrestrained 

 right of science to investigate fully and hopefully whatever facts or 

 aspects of Nature lie to her hand. They present, if need exists for such 

 apology, the fullest justification of the scientific investigator's work, 



