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- 1 
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 
VOL. II. T 
