14 LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
less dangerous. Hence that perverted use of the word 
scepticism which has made it synonymous with irreligion. 
All thinking men must of necessity be sceptics, for doubt 
lies at the bottom of investigation. 
It is hard for any young man of the present day to 
conceive of the amount of bigotry and intolerance that 
has been driven out of the human mind by the progress of 
science during the past seventy years. A short time ago 
I bought a copy of Lawrence’s Lectures on Zoology. 
The book-stall keeper knew about his book, and put an 
extra value on it. Why? Because it was the edition 
which had to be called in, and which nearly ruined its 
author, by reason of its being considered such a wicked 
and blasphemous book. That was in 1822. I read it 
with some interest. To my present notion it appeared 
a very simple and elementary statement of some very 
commonplace things in Natural History that. every sixth 
standard boy knows;—that young gentleman having 
apparently taken the place of Macaulay’s fifth form school- 
boy, who has not been advancing lately. Poor Lawrence 
had hazarded a few speculations upon what life, and man, 
and mind might be;—and so the theologians, and even 
some of the ticketers and labellers of scientific goods, who 
- passed muster as scientific men in those days, promptly 
set at him. Although, however, his lectures seem so 
crude and elementary now, they were prefaced by a defence 
of freedom of thought, which remains to this day a monu- 
ment of his love of liberty and of his command of the 
English language. He says, ‘“‘I plead not guilty, and 
enter on my defence with a confident reliance on the 
candour and impartiality of the tribunal before whom the 
cause is brought :—a tribunal too enlightened to confound 
the angry feelings and exaggerated expressions of con- 
troversy with the calm deductions of reason; and well 
