32 IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 



landed us in the theory of the persistence, or indestruc- 

 tibility, of force. And in the infinitely minute, as in the 

 infinitely great, the seekers after natural knowledge of 

 the kinds called physical and chemical, have everywhere 

 found a definite order and succession of events which 

 seem never to be infringed. 



And how has it fared with "Physick" and Anatomy? 

 Have the anatomist, the physiologist, or the physician, 

 whose business it has been to devote themselves assidu- 

 ously to that eminently practical and direct end, the alle- 

 viation of the sufferings of mankind, have they been 

 able to confine their vision more absolutely to the strictly 

 useful? I fear they are worst offenders of all. For if 

 the astronomer has set before us the infinite magnitude 

 of space, and the practical eternity of the duration of the 

 universe; if the physical and chemical philosophers have 

 demonstrated the infinite minuteness of its constituent 

 parts, and the practical eternity of matter and of force; 

 and if both have alike proclaimed the universality of a 

 definite and predicable order and succession of events, 

 the workers in biology have not only accepted all these, 

 but have added more startling theses of their own. For, 

 as these astronomers discover in the earth no center of 

 the universe, but an eccentric speck, so the naturalists 

 find man to be no center of the living world, but one 

 amidst endless modifications of life; and as the astron- 

 omer observes the mark of practically endless time set 

 upon the arrangements of the solar system so the stu- 

 dent of life finds the records of ancient forms of exist- 

 ence peopling the world for ages, which, in relation to 

 human experience, are infinite. 



Furthermore, the physiologist finds life to be as de- 

 pendent for its manifestation on particular molecular 

 arrangements as any physical or chemical phenomenon; 

 and wherever he extends his researches, fixed order and 



