TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. 797 



scientific achieveixtiils of tlie past, be fully recognised the prospects of still further 

 advances, and observed, * The known is very small compared with the knowable, 

 and we may trust in the Author of all truth, who, I think, will not let that 

 truth remain for ever hidden.' 



I have endeavoured to show that there is still room for all workers, that the 

 naturalist has his place, though the morphologist and the physiologist have rightly 

 come into far greater prominence, and we need not yet abandon the- field-glass 

 and the lens for the microscope and the scalpel. The studies of the laboratory 

 still leave room for the observations of the field. The investigation of muscles, 

 the analysis of brain tissue, the research into the chemical properties of pigment, 

 have not rendered worthless the study and observation of life and habits. As you 

 cannot diagnose the Red Indian and the Anglo-Saxon by a comparison of their 

 respective skeletons or researches into their muscular structure, but require to 

 know the habits, the language, the modes of thought of each ; so the mammal, 

 the bird, and even the invertebrate, has his character, his voice, his impulses, aye, 

 I will add, his ideas, to be taken into account in order to discriminate him. There 

 is something beyond matter in life, even in its lowest forms. I may quote on thi& 

 the caution uttered by a predecessor of mine in this chair (Professor Milnes 

 Marshall) : ' One thing above all is apparent, that erabryologists must not work 

 single-handed ; must not be satisfied with an acquaintance, however exact, with 

 animals from the side of development only ; for embryos have this in common with 

 maps, that too close and too exclusive a study of them is apt to disturb a man's 

 reasoning power.' 



The ancient Greek philosopher gives us a threefold division of the intellectual 

 faculties — cppovrja-is, fTriarrifxr], avveais — and I think we may apply it to the sub- 

 division of labour in natural science : (j) pout] a- is, f) ra xa^' cKaara yvapl^ovaa, is the 

 power that divides, discerns, distinguislaes— i.e., the naturalist; (Tf)veafi, the opera- 

 tion of the closet zoologist, who investigates and experiments ; and e'-iaTrjprj, the 

 faculty of the philosopher, who draws his conclusions from facts and observations. 



The older naturalists lost much from lack of the records of previous observa- 

 tions ; their difficulties were not ours, but thej' went to nature for their teachings 

 rather than to books. Now we find it hard to avoid being smothered with the 

 literature of the subject, and being choked with the dust of libraries. The danger 

 against which Professor Marshall warns the embryologist is not confined to him 

 alone ; the observer of facts is equally exposed to it, and he must beware of the 

 danger, else he may become a mere materialist. The poetic, the imaginative, the 

 emotional, the spiritual, all go to make up the man ; and if one of these is missing, 

 he is incomplete. 



I cannot but feel that the danger of this concentration upon one side only of 

 nature is painfully illustrated in the life of our great master, Darwin. In his early 

 days he was a lover of literature, he delighted in Shakespeare and other poets ; 

 but after years of scientific activity and interest, he found on taking them up 

 again that he had not only grown indifferent to them, but that they were even 

 distasteful to him. He had suffered a sort of atrophy on that side of his nature, 

 as the disused pinions of the Kakapo have become powerless — the spiritual, the 

 imaginative, the emotional, we may call it. 



• The case of Darwin illustrates a law — a principle we may call it — namely, that 

 the spiritual faculty lives or dies by exercise or the want of it even as does the bodily. 

 Yet the atrophy was unconscious. Far was it from Darwin to ignore or depreciate 

 studies not his own. He has shown us this when heprefixed to the title-page of his great 

 work the following extract from Lord Chancellor Bacon: — ' To conclude, there- 

 fore, let no man, out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation,, 

 think or maintain that a man can search too far, or be too well studied in the book 

 of God's word, or in the book of God's works, divinity or philosophy, but rather 

 let men endeavour an endless progress or proficience in both.' In true harmony 

 is this with the spirit of the father of natural history, concluding with the words, 

 ' Lord, how manifold are Thy works ! in wisdom hast Thou made them all : the 

 earth is full of Thv riches.' 



