312 ON NATURAL HISTORY, 



Intellect and Benevolence, in some sort similar to our own, then from 

 the existence of a beauty (nay, even of a humour), and of a pre- 

 dominant harmonious variety in unity in nature, which, if the work of 

 man, would be regarded as the highest art, we are similarly bound to 

 conclude that the esthetic faculties of the human soul have also been 

 foreshadowed in the Infinite Mind. 



Such is a brief indication of the regions of thought into which 

 natural history leads us, and we may surely conclude that as Know- 

 ledge it stands second in scope and breadth to no science. 



As Disciplifie, impartial consideration will show that it takes no 

 lo\\'er rank ; whether we regard it as a gymnastic for the intellectual, 

 the moral, or the a;sthetic faculty. 



For the successful carrying on of the business of life, no less than 

 for the pursuit of science, it is essential that the mind should easily 

 and accurately perform the four great intellectual processes of obser- 

 vation, experiment, induction, and deduction. No training can be so 

 well adapted to develop the first of these faculties as that of the 

 naturalist, the very foundation of whose studies lies in exact observa- 

 tion of characters and nice discrimination of resemblances and differ- 

 ences. In fact, the skilled naturalist is the only man who combines 

 the moral and intellectual advantages of civilization with that acute- 

 ness and minute accuracy of perception which distinguish the savage 

 hunter ; and if man's senses are to keep pace with his intellect as the 

 world grows older, natural history observation must be made a branch 

 of ordinary education. 



Again, what science can present more perfect examples of the 

 application of the methods of experiment than physiology? All .that 

 we know of the physiology of the nervous system rests on experi- 

 ment ; and if we turn to other functions, the investigations of 

 Bernard might be cited as striking specimens of experimental 

 research. 



To say that natural history as a science is equivalent to the 

 assertion that it exercises the inductive and deductive faculties ; but 

 it is often forgotten that the so-called " natural classification " of 

 living beings is, in reality, not mere classification, but the result of a 

 great series of inductive investigations. In a " natural classification " 

 the definitions of the classes are, in fact, the laws of living form, 

 obtained, like all other laws, by a process of induction from observed 

 facts. 



For examples of the exercise of deduction, of the arguing from 

 the laws of living form obtained by induction, to their legitimate 

 consequences, the whole science of palaeontology may be cited. 



