212 On the Study of Biology. [ April, 
words, by their utility ; but I should like that we should quite 
clearly understand what it is that we mean by this word “ util- 
ity.” Now, in an Englishman’s mouth, it generally means that 
by which we get pudding or praise, or both. I have no doubt 
that is one meaning of the word utility, but it by no means in- 
cludes all I mean by utility. I think that knowledge of every 
kind is useful in proportion as it tends to give people right ideas, 
which are essential to the foundation of right practice, and to re- 
move wrong ideas, which are the no less essential foundations 
and fertile mothers of every description of error in practice. 
And, upon the whole, inasmuch as this world is, after all, what- ` 
ever practical people may say, absolutely governed by ideas, and 
very often by the wildest and most hypothetical ideas, it is a 
matter of the very greatest importance that our theories of things, 
and even of things that seem a long way apart from our daily 
lives, should be as far as possible true, and as far as possible re- 
moved from error. It is not only in the coarser practical sense 
of the word utility, but in this higher and broader sense, that 
I measure the value of the study of biology by its utility, and I 
shall try to point out to you that you will feel the need of some 
knowledge of biology at a great many turns of this present nine- 
teenth-century life of ours. For example, most of us lay great 
and very just stress upon the conception which is entertained of 
the position of man in this universe, and his relation to the rest 
of nature. We have almost all of us been told, and most of us — 
hold by the tradition, that man occupies an isolated and peculiar 
position in nature ; that though he is in the world he is not of 
the world ; that his relations to things about him are of a remote 
character, that his origin is recent, his duration likely to be short, 
and that he is the great central figure round which other things 
in this world revolve. But this is not what the biologists tell us. 
At the present moment you will be kind enough to separate me 
from them, because it is in no way essential to my argument Just 
now that I should advocate their views. Don’t suppose that I am 
saying this for the purpose of escaping the responsibility of their 
beliefs, because at other times and in other places I do not think 
that point has been left doubtful ; but I want clearly to point out to 
you that for my present argument they may all be wrong; never- 
theless, my argument will hold good. The biologists tell us that 
all this is an entire mistake. They turn to the physical organiza- 
tion of man. They examine his whole structure, his bony frame, 
and all that clothes it. They resolve him into the finest particles 
