PHYSIOLOGY : ITS PLACE IN EDUCATION. 
387 
order of animals, among which we hold the highest place. 
Our organization includes the most exalted specimen of 
nature’s work exhibited to us here below. In no depart- 
ment of science has so extraordinary a body of knowledge 
been evolved. In none have results been obtained mani- 
festing in a more striking manner the attributes of the 
great Maker of all, than in the provisions made . for the 
maintenance and continuance of the species which inhabit 
the earth, and for the moral and physical supremacy of man 
over them. . . . 
44 The influence which the study of natural science exer- 
cises upon the intellectual faculties merits serious attention. 
The course of investigation through which the mind is 
o o 
conducted in such studies habituates it to ascend from 
effects to causes, yet never advancing a step without sub- 
mitting the deductions of reason to the severe tests of 
experiment and observation. While such studies lead, there- 
fore, to a habit of lofty speculation, they never permit the 
imagination to wander, inasmuch as the material verification 
is rigorously placed in juxtaposition with the speculative 
hypothesis. This, in a word, like every other branch of 
natural history prosecuted on just principles, exercises the 
mind better than any other in those methods of reasoning, 
without which all investigation is laborious and all exposition 
obscure.”* 
To insist on the importance of physiology as a branch of 
general learning, apart from its sanitary utility, may appear 
new and strange to many. Yet it is not new. The ancient 
philosophers — the acquirement of whose language has been 
made to take the foremost rank in our educational establish- 
ments, while their example in teaching practically useful 
subjects has been nearly utterly neglected — made this study 
a part of the instruction which they offered to the people. 
The Timaeus of Plato is a prominent example of this : in it 
the structure and functions of the human body are set forth, 
according to the then prevailing ideas. 
But the teaching of any branch of natural science cannot, 
in the nature of things, be limited in its effects to the mere 
development of the faculties of the mind. It must have a 
practical influence on the actions and habits of men : — that is 
to say (taking physiology as the example), the mere know- 
ledge of the structure and functions of the body, and of the 
agencies which affect them, must lead all, who possess ordi- 
nary reason, to cultivate those influences which preserve 
health, and to avoid or remove those which injure it. Is it 
* * Animal Physics’, pp. 1*3. 
