364 RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE. 



the conception that great as are the material benefits which accrue 

 from science, greater still is the intellectual and moral good which it 

 brings to man; and part of his zeal for physiology was based on the 

 conviction that great as is the help which, as the basis of the knowl- 

 edge of disease, and its applications to the healing art, it offers to suffer- 

 ing humanity in its pains and ills, still greater is the promise which it 

 gives of clearing up the dark problems of human nature, and laying 

 down rules for human conduct. No token, in these present days, is 

 more striking or more mournful than that note of pessimism which is 

 sounded by so many men of letters, in our own land, no less than in 

 others, who, knowing nothing of, take no heed of the ways and aims of 

 science. Cast adrift from old moorings, such men toss about in dark- 

 ness on the waves of despair. There was no such note from Huxley. 

 He had marked the limits of human knowledge, and had been led to 

 doubt things about which other men are sure, but he never doubted in 

 the worth and growing power of science, and, with a justified optimism, 

 looked forward with confident hope to its being man's help and guide 

 in the days to come. 



