ADDRESS. lxxi 



ence more especially of the opinions held by three of the greatest natu- 

 ralists and biologists who have ever lived, Linnoeus, Haller, and Cuvior 

 (men unsurpassed in the learning of their time, and the authors of im- 

 portant discoveries in a wide range of biological science), was decidedly 

 adverse to the free current of speculative thought upon the more general 

 doctrines of biology. And if it were warrantable to attribute so great a 

 change of opinion as that to which I have adverted as occurring in my own 

 time to the influence of any single intellect, it must be admitted that it is 

 justly due to the vast range and accuracy of his knowledge of scientific facts, 

 the quick appreciation of their mutual interdependence, and, above all, the 

 unexampled clearness and candour in statement of Charles Darwin. 



Eut while we readily acknowledge the large share which Darwin has had 

 in guiding scientific thought into the newer tracks of biological doctrine, we 

 shall also be disposod to allow that the slow aud difficult process of emanci- 

 jiation from the thraldom of dogmatic opinion in regard to a system of 

 creation, and the adoption of large and independent views more consistent 

 with observation, reason, philosophy, and religion, has only been possible 

 under the effect of the general progress of scientific knowledge and the 

 acquisition of sounder methods of applying its principles to the explanation 

 of natural phenomena. 



I have already referred to Goethe, Oken, Lamarck, and Geoffroy St.-Hilairc 

 as among the most prominent of the earlier pioneers in the modem or reformed 

 conceptions of biological laws. But were it desirable to mark the progress 

 of opinion by quoting other authors and labourers whose contributions have 

 mainly supplied the materials out of which the new fabric has been con- 

 structed, I should have to produce a long catalogue of distinguished names, 

 among which would be found those of Lyell and Owen, as earliest shaping 

 the doctrines and guiding opinion in this country, Johannes Miiller and 

 Yon Baer, as taking the places of Haller and Cuvier on the Continent, and 

 a host of other faithful workers in Biology belonging to the earlier part 

 of this century, such as G. Treviranus, J. F. Meckel, Carus, and many 

 more*. To Huxley more especially and Herbert Spencer the greatest influ- 

 ence on British thought in the same direction is to be ascribed. 



Let us hope that in these times, when it has been found necessary to modify 

 the older teleological views to so great an extent, although there may still 

 be much that is unknown, and wide differences of opinion in regard to the 

 nature and sequence of natural phenomena and the mode of their interprota- 



* It would also be unjust to omit to mention here one of the earliest attempts to bring 

 British opinion into a new channel, by the remarkable work entitled ' Vestiges of Creation,' 

 wbich appeared in 1844, nor to conceal from ourselves the unmerited ridicule and obloquy 

 attempted to be thrown upon the author, not perhaps so much on account of tbo many 

 inaccuracies unavoidable in the- endeavour at that time to overtake so large a field, as 

 directed against the dangerous tendencies supposed to lurk in its reasoning. 



