AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
Vou. x1.— AUGUST, 1877. — No. 8. 
CATASTROPHISM AND EVOLUTION. 
BY CLARENCE KING. 
E have come together to-day to do honor to this young, 
strong institution. We are here that we may make the 
human cireuit complete, and feel the current of a common pride 
glow from brain to brain. In celebrating the honest, manly 
growth of the Sheffield Scientific School, among the feelings which 
animate us veneration for antiquity finds no place. It is denied 
us to look back into the real past, for the brief lapse of thirty 
years compasses the life of the school. That short period, how- 
ever, has amply sufficed to develop, with positive distinctness, 
the motive and animus of the institution. Its peculiar character 
is fixed. Reverence for natural truth and the deep, earnest, sci- 
entific methods of searching after it are what is taught here; so 
that we who have passed beyond these doors are gladly welcomed 
among that resolute band of nature-workers who both propel and 
` guide the great plowshare of science on through the virgin sod of 
the unknown, 
It is centuries too late to define or establish the value of sci- 
ence. Its numberless applications, which find daily expression in 
the material appointments of life, and serve to refine, to elevate, 
to render more admirable the mechanism of civilization, have 
long since put that question at rest. Let us hope that as a 
means. of clearing away the endless rubbish of false ideas from 
the human intellect, for the lifting of man out of the dominion of 
ignorance, scientific method and scientific education are acknowl- 
edged to be adequate, if not supreme. We may congratulate our- 
selves, for that victory is won. At last modern society admits 
that a knowledge of the laws which govern the cognizable uni- 
verse, and the possession of the only methods which can advance 
* An address delivered at the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale College, New 
Haven, June 26, 1877. ; 
Fae 
Copyright, 1877, by A. S. PACKARD, JR. 
+ 
