THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 1 5 



or by the observation and experience of others communicated to us, 

 which, when perfectly reliable, should be accepted by us and be as 

 useful to us as our own. The observations and experience of 

 several persons, agreeing on some particular thing, is confirmatory ; 

 this, continued for generations, becomes absolute certainty. It is 

 thus that we have attained to our knowledge of the laws of Nature, 

 on whose stability we confidently rely. Long continued observation 

 and experience having demonstrated that, given a certain condition 

 and combination, a certain result will follow, and that that condition 

 and combination will inevitably produce that result every time ; 

 change the condition or the combination, and a change in the result 

 will assuredly follow. This we call a law of Nature, and it is the 

 absolute stability of these that has made Science possible. 



The next question is, what is Nature ? I reply, all matter and 

 life that we can investigate in time and space. Anything beyond 

 this must belong to the supernatural, of which, by no natural powers 

 in our possession, can we discover anything. We may draw infer- 

 ences about it from what we know, but these will be always open to 

 question ; or, we may believe what we have been told about it, but 

 there our knowledge on the whole subject ends, and our belief in the 

 statement will be in exact proportion to our confidence in the source 

 from which it came. 



The term " Species," or its equivalent, is no doubt an ancient 

 one, and would be in use long before classification was thought of. 



When man at first began to observe the forms of life around 

 him, he saw them separated into a great many different kinds. These 

 kinds did not commingle and lose their identity. Each came 

 from ancestors of its own kind, and its progeny was in its own like- 

 ness. This he concluded had been going on since their origin, and 

 would go on to the end of their history. These kinds he called 

 " Species," and associated with it the idea of permanence. Com- 

 mon names were early given by men to the common forms of their 

 country, but it was discovered that different names had been given 

 to the same form in different parts of the same country ; so, to avoid 

 confusion, it became necessary to describe the form and give it a 

 name that would distinguish it in that and all other countries. As 

 investigation became more general, and the students of one country 

 travelled into others, their attention was arrested by the fact that 

 some of the familiar forms had changed their appearance, and as he 



