108 REPORT— 1870. 



large a series of interesting and important subjects as being subjects witli ■which 

 we shall forthwith begin to deal in this Section, to say any thing at length as to the 

 advantages which may reasonably be expected to accrue from the study of Biology. 

 I may put its claims before you in a rough way by saying that I should be rejoiced 

 iadeed if, when money comes to be granted by the Association for the following up 

 the various lines of biological research upon which certain of its members are en- 

 gaged, we could hope to obtain a one hundi-edth, or I might say a thousandth part 

 of the amount of money which has in the past year been lost to the State ana to 

 individuals through ignorance or disregard of biological laws now well established. 

 I need say nothing of the suffering or death which anti-sanitary conditions en- 

 tail, as surely as, though less palpably and rapidly than, a fire or a battle ; and I 

 might, if there were time for it, take my stand simply upon what is measurable bv 

 money. This I will not do, as it is less pleasant to speak of what has been lost 

 than of that which has been or may be gained. And of this latter let me speak 

 in a few words, and under two heads — the intellectual and the moral gains accruing 

 from a study of the Natui-al-Hi story Sciences. As to the intellectual gains, the 

 real psychologist and the true logician know very well that the discourse on method 

 which comes from a man who is an actual investigator is worthy, even though it be 

 but short and packed away in an Introduction or an Appendix, or though it cover 

 but a couple of pages in the middle of a book, like the ''Regulse Philosophandi" 

 of Newton, more than whole columns of the " Sophistical Dialectic" of the ancient 

 Schoolman and his modern followers. " If you wish your son to become a logi- 

 cian," said Johnson, "let him study Chillingworth" — meaning thereby that real 

 vital knowledge of the art and science can arise only out of the practice of reason- 

 ing ; and as to the value of actual experimentation as a qualification for writing 

 about method, Claude Bernard and Berthelot are, and I trust wiU long remain, 

 living examples of what Descartes and Pascal, their fellow-countrymen, are illus- 

 trious departed examples. (See Janet, ' Revue de deux Mondes,' tome Ixii. p. 910, 

 1866.) 



I pass on now to say a word on the working of natural-science studies upon the 

 faculty of attention, the faculty which has very often and very truly been spoken 

 of as forming the connecting-link between the intellectual and the moral elements 

 of om- immaterial nature. 1 am able to illustrate their beneficial working in pro- 

 ducing carefulness and in enforcing perseverance, by a story turning upon the use 

 of, or rather upon the need for, a word. Von Baer, now the Nestor ot biologists, 

 after a long argumentation (Mem. Acad. Imp. Sci. St. Petersbourg, 1859, p. 340) 

 of the value which characterizes his argumentations generally, as to the affinities of 

 certain oceanic races, proceeds to consider how it is that certain of his predecessors 

 in that sphere, or, rather, in that hemisphere, as Mr. Wallace has taught us Oceania 

 is very nearly, had so lamentably failed in attaining or coming anywhere near to 

 the truth. This failure is ascribed to something which he calls " Ungenirtheit," a 

 word which you will not find in a German dictionary, the thing itself not being, 

 Von Baer says, German either. I am happy not to be able to find an exact equi- 

 valent for this word in any single English vocable ; the opposite quality shows it- 

 self in facing conscientiously "the drudgery of details, without which drudgery," 

 Dr. Temple tells us (Nine Schools Commission Report, vol. ii. p. 311), "nothing 

 worth doing was ever yet done." Mr. Mill, I would add, speaks to the same eflect, 

 and even more appositely, as far as our purpose and om- vocations are concerned, in 

 his wise Inaugural Addi-ess at St. Andrews, p. 50. For the utter incompatibility of 

 an draXain-ajpos CrjTrjais (these two words give a Thucydidean rendering of " Un- 

 genirtheit ") with the successful investigation of natural problems, I would refer 

 any man of thought, even though he be not a biologist, to a consideration of the 

 way in which problems as simple at first sight as the question of the feeding or 

 non-feeding of the salmon in fresh water (see Dr. Mcintosh, Linn. Soc. Proc. vii. 

 p. 148), or that of the agencies whereby certain moUusks and annelids bore their 

 way into wood, clay, or rocks, must be investigated. It is easy to gather from such 

 a consideration how severe are the requirements made by natiu-al-science investi- 

 gations upon the liveliness and continuousness with which we must keep our 

 faculty of attention at work. 



I shall speak of but one of the many piu-ely moral benefits which may be rea- 



