50 



thus honored ? In the brief moments allotted to me I can 

 but mention three pregnant results of the scientific study of 

 Nature. 



In the first place, natural science has engendered a peculiar 

 kind of human mind — the searching, open, humble mind, 

 which, knowing that it cannot attain unto all truth, or even to 

 much new truth, is yet patiently and enthusiastically devoted 

 to the pursuit of such little new truth as is within its grasp, 

 having no other end than to learn, prizing above all things 

 accuracy, thoroughness, and candor in research, proud and 

 happy not in its own single strength, but in the might of that 

 host of students, whose past conquests make up the wondrous 

 sum of present knowledge, whose sure future triumphs each 

 humblest worker in imagination shares. Within the last four 

 hundred years this typical scientific mind has gradually come to 

 be the kind of philosophic mind most admired by the educated 

 class ; indeed, it has come to be the only kind of mind, except 

 the poetic, which commands the respect of scholars, whatever 

 their department of learning. In every field of study, in his- 

 tory, philology, philosophy, and theology, as well as in nat- 

 ural history and physics, it is now the scientific spirit, the 

 scientific method, which prevails. The substitution in the 

 esteem of reasonable men of this receptive, fore-reaching 

 mind for the dogmatic, overbearing, closed mind, which as- 

 sumes that it already possesses all essential truth, and is enti- 

 tled to the exclusive interpretation of it, is a most beneficent 

 result of the study of natural history and physics. It is an 

 achievement which has had much to do with the modern in- 

 crease of liberty in human society, liberty individual, political 

 and religious ; it is an achievement of the highest promise for 

 the future of the race. 



The second result which I wish to specify is the stupend- 

 ous doctrine of hereditary transmission, which during the 

 past thirty years, or within the lifetime of most of those who hear 

 me, natural science has developed and enforced by observations 

 and comparisons covering the whole field of organized life. 

 This conception is far from being a new one. Our race has 

 long practised, though ^fitfully and empirically, upon some 

 crude and fragmentary forms of this idea. Tribes, clans, 



