W. B. DWK.iHT. 65 



most advanced and distinguished of scientists and biolo- 

 gists, in which he warns his fellow scientists, in memorable 

 language, against allowing their narrow specialization in 

 work to go beyond its bounds in crowding out the truths 

 of a higher philosophy. These are the words of the 

 learned Dr. William B. Carpenter, in his inaugural ad- 

 dress before the British Association for the Advancement 

 of Science, in 1872. They may be found in Appleton's 

 Popular Science Monthly, vol. i., for that year. Dr. Car- 

 penter says : 



" The science of modern times, however, has taken a 

 more special direction. Fixing its attention exclusively 

 on the order of nature, it has separated itself, wholly 

 from theology, whose function it is to seek after its cause. 

 In this, science is fully justified, alike by the entire in- 

 dependence of its objects, and by the historical fact that 

 it has been continually hampered and impeded in its 

 search for the truth, as it is in nature by the restraints 

 which theologians have attempted to imi3ose upon its in- 

 quiries. But when science, passing beyond its own lim- 

 its, assumes to take the place of theology, and sets up 

 its own concep^ion of the order of nature as a sufficient 

 account of its cause, it is invading a province of thought 

 to which it has no claim, and not unreasonably provokes 

 the hostility of those who ought to be its best friends. 

 For while the deep-seated instincts of humanity, and the 

 profoundest researches of philosophy, alike point to 

 mind as the one and only source of power, it is the pre- 

 rogative of science to demonstrate the unity of the power 

 which is operating through the limitless extent and 

 variety of the universe, and to trace its continuity 

 through the vast series of ages that have been occupied 

 in its evolution." 



I cannot leave this subject, without suggesting, in a few 

 words, some of its manifest applications to the work of 

 our Scientific Section. This is the first year in which we 



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