•574 report — 1878. 



and I know not what else, were being said there, which gave rise to terrible appre- 

 hensions. The whole world, it was thought, was coming to an end, just as I have 

 no doubt that, if there were any human inhabitants of Antrim in the middle of the 

 tertiary epoch, when those great lava streams burst out, they would not have had 

 the smallest question that the whole universe was going to pieces. Well, the 

 universe has not gone to pieces. Antrim is, geologically speaking, a very quiet 

 place now, as well cultivated a place as one need see, and yielding abundance of ex- 

 cellent produce ; and so, if we turn to the Geological Section, nothing can be milder 

 than the proceedings of that admirable body. All the difficulties that they seemed 

 to have encountered at first have died away, and statements that were the horrible 

 paradoxes of that generation are now the commonplaces of schoolboys. At present 

 the locus of disturbance is to be found in the Biological Section, and more par- 

 ticularly in the anthropological department of that Section. History repeats it- 

 self, and precisely the same apprehensions which were expressed by the aborigines 

 of the Geological Section, in long far back time, are at present expressed by those 

 who attend our deliberations. The world is coming to an end, the basis of morality 

 is being shaken, and I don't know what is not to happen if certain conclusions which 

 appear probable are to be verified. Well, now, whoever may be here thirty years 

 hence — I certainly shall not be — but, depend upon it, whoever may be speaking at the 

 meeting of this department of the British Association thirty years hence will find, 

 exactly as the members of the Geological Section have found, on looking back thirty 

 years, that the very paradoxes and horrible conclusions, things that are now thought 

 to be going to shake the foundations of the world, will by that time have become 

 parts of every-day knowledge and will be taught in our schools as accepted truth, 

 and nobody will be one whit the worse. 



The considerations which I think it desirable to put before you, in order to show 

 the foundations of this conviction at which I have very confidently arrived, are i if 

 two kinds. The first is a reason based entirely upon philosophical considerations, 

 namely, this — that the region of pure physical science, and the region of those ques- 

 tions which specially interest ordinary humanity, are apart, and that the conclusions 

 reached in the one have no direct effect in the other. If you acquaint yourself with 

 the history of philosophy, and with the endless variations of human opinion therein 

 recorded, you will find that there is not a single one of those speculative difficulties 

 which at the present time torment many minds as being the direct product of 

 scientific thought, which is not as old as the times of Greek philosophy, and which 

 did not then exist as strongly and as clearly as such difficulties exist now, though 

 they arose out of arguments based upon merely philosophical ideas. Whoever ad- 

 mits these two things — as everybody who looks about him must do — whoever takes 

 into account the existence of evil in this world and the law of causation — has before 

 him all the difficulties that can be raised by any form of scientific speculation. And 

 these two difficulties have been occupying the minds of men ever since man bewail 

 to think. The other consideration I have to put before you is that, whatever may 

 be the results at which physical science as applied to man shall arrive, those results 

 are inevitable— I mean that they arise out of the necessary progress of scientific 

 thought as applied to man. You all, I hope, had the opportunity of hearing the 

 excellent address which was given by our President yesterday, in which he traced 

 out the marvellous progress of our knowledge of the higher animals which has been 

 effected since the time of Linnseus. It is no exaggeration to say that at this 

 present time the merest tyro knows a thousand times as much on the subject as is 

 contained in the work of Linnaeus, which was then the standard authority. Now 

 how has that been brought about ? If you consider what zoology, or the study of 

 animals, signifies, you will see that it means an endeavour to ascertain all that can 

 be studied, all the answers that can be given respecting any animal under four 

 possible points of view. The first of these embraces considerations of structure. 

 An animal has a certain structure and a certain mode of development, which means 

 that it passes through a series of stages to that structure. In the second place, every 

 animal exhibits a great number of active powers, the knowledge of which constitutes 

 its physiology ; and under those active powers we have, as physiologists, not only to 

 include such matters as have been referred to by Dr. M'Donnell in his observations,*but 

 to take into account other kinds of activity. I see it announced that the Zoological 



