TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 95 



opening address, though it is held to be inexpedient that it should he elaborate or 

 long. While debating on the subjects on which I might usefully touch, I chanced 

 to encounter the remark of a philosophic writer, that the time was come when it 

 was a prime necessity for Biology that it should be separated from Medicine. The 

 grounds alleged were, the imperfect education of physicians, their want of leisure, 

 and the magnitude of biological science. There seemed to me such a mixture of 

 truth and error in the remark itself, and in the general tenor of the data on which 

 it was founded, that it appeared to me well worthy of your attention. 



As to the imperfect education of physicians, the remark is too general to be 

 correct, and is not a topic proper to be considered here, further than to say, 

 1st, that it is to great medical minds, from Hippocrates and Galen down to 

 Haller and Hunter, that we owe the promotion, and, indeed, the very creation, 

 of a large part of existing biological knowledge, so that these men cannot have 

 been ill furnished for their work ; and 2ndly, that it is certain that no persons 

 who are not well prepared will in future make any additions of importance to 

 this or any other department of science. The observation, therefore, on the 

 whole, amounts to this, that in these days biological science has become too 

 extensive to be committed to the care of any but those who can give to it 

 undivided attention. This also is only true under limitation. It is true so far as 

 this, that division of labour is as necessary for the perfection of this portion of 

 science as of others ; and further, that some parts of biology are become so com- 

 plicated and so extensive as to demand for original work the whole powers of any 

 man of ordinary calibre. But it would be quite as just if we were to lay it down 

 broadly, " There has been no period when it was as necessary for the progress of 

 biology as now it is, that its relations with medicine should be "closely maintained." 

 Neither position would be wholly true, or, therefore, wholly safe. It may not be 

 amiss to occupy a short time at the outset of our detailed labours with a brief 

 consideration of the real scope of the pursuit in which we are engaged, and of the 

 means which we possess for attaining our objects. I crave your indulgence if 

 my analytical description fall short of your distinct conceptions or your more 

 sanguine aspirations. 



The objects of biological study are, unquestionably, as in most other sciences, 

 First, simply to ascertain what are the facts in a certain department of Nature, 

 with no regard to the practical consequences which can be deducible therefrom ; 

 and Secondly, but less directly, to discover the laws and devise the rules which 

 are of various degrees of importance and value for the practical exigencies of 

 mankind,— just as mathematical and physical astronomers investigate the facts 

 which are necessary for the construction of the Ephemeris, and make it to be a 

 work of equal value for the pure astronomer and for the practical navigator. 



But some of the facts which physiology investigates, and the laws which it 

 seeks to discover, happen to be of cogent consequence to all men equally, — to the 

 thoughtful and the cidtivated, because they have the tendency to illuminate the 

 most hidden recesses of our mental constitutions, the most obsciu-e traces of our 

 origin, and our various correlations to other beings, animate and inanimate ; to the 

 mere " hewers of wood and drawers of water " among men, because it seeks to 

 ascertain in the most precise manner the conditions of physical existence, to point 

 out the work that can, and that cannot, be done upon such and such an amount of 

 sustenance. In short, it seeks to define the exigencies of the human body in 

 respect of all the external circumstances in which it is ordinarily placed, in respect 

 also of all other physical agents that can act upon, or be acted upon by it; 

 together with the internal chemical and physical alterations to which these several 

 circumstances can, directly or indirectly, give rise. It has to leam also the limits 

 of toleration within which the body is confined by these external agents, and the 

 way in which these limits are regulated — as the laws of toleration of climate, of 

 heat, of food, of various noxious agents, and many other particulars, of which the 

 catalogue would be greater than that of the ships "of Homer. 



Every person, therefore, whether he knows it or not — the Statesman, who has 

 to consider the sustentation of the people — the Religious man (that is, every one 

 who believes in a moral government of the world, or hopes for a future state, and 

 who has opinions on the history or origin of the Human Race) — the Animal man, 



