OWEN'S POSITION IN THE HISTORY 

 OF ANATOMICAL SCIENCE 



BY 



THE RIGHT HON. THOMAS H. HUXLEY, F.R.S. 



The attempt to form a just conception of the 

 value of work done in any department of human 

 knowledge, and of its significance as an indication 

 of the intellectual and moral qualities of which it 

 was the product, is an undertaking which must 

 always be beset with difficulties, and may easily 

 end in making the limitations of the appraiser 

 more obvious than the true worth of that which 

 he appraises. For the judgment of a contem- 

 porary is liable to be obscured by intellectual 

 incompatibilities and warped by personal antago- 

 nisms ; while the critic of a later generation, 

 though he may escape the influence of these 

 sources of error, is often ignorant, or forgetful of, 

 the conditions under which the labours of his 

 predecessors have been carried on. He is prone 

 to lose sight of the fact that without their clearing 



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