25 
mechanical classification, but certainly not a scientific or a natural 
one. 
It may be asked why I have selected this part of our subject to 
discourse on to-night. My answer is that the year 1895 will go 
down to posterity as that in which the new ideas of classification (those 
based on evolutionary principles) were first welded into a shape, crude 
it may be, that is understanded of the people. Your Stainton and 
Newman may still help you to name your insects, but you will cease 
to look upon these works as indicating in the least .the scientific 
knowledge which has accumulated, nor will you, in future, consider 
the arrangements of the insects therein adopted as indicating in the 
least degree natural systems. You must cease to consider them as sug¬ 
gesting anything but the most antiquated views of entomology ; you 
will use them, not as an end, as so many of our collectors have done, 
but as a means to an end, and remember that when you can name all 
the British insects readily, the science of entomology may have only 
just begun, and that many collectors who would not fail to name, at 
sight, almost every British species, are utterly ignorant of the simplest 
problems relating to the subject they profess to study. 
You may further ask, how it is that I lay down such ex cathedra views 
on classification, and I must own that this is more difficult to answer 
satisfactorily, because, although it appears to me to be necessary, yet it 
may become misleading. The man who lays down half-hearted views is 
never listened to ; therefore, when a man believes what he says, he 
must say it with no uncertain sound ; but I would warn our younger 
members not to be led away by this. I state what I believe, hut 
if I were convinced to-morrow that my opinions were wrong, I would 
champion my new opinions with all the fervour of the old. The man 
who has fixed opinions, which he holds in spite of all proof that they 
are erroneous, the man who, having made a statement or formulated 
a conclusion, sticks to the statement, or upholds the conclusion after 
it has been proved wrong, and the man who takes the criticism of his 
scientific conclusions as a personal attack upon himself, are stumbling- 
blocks to scientific advance. Science must be impersonal, and a man 
must be ready to advance fresh explanations of existing facts the 
moment he sees that previous explanations are insufficient or erroneous. 
When one is young one feels a personal interest in one’s creations, and 
falls sometimes into these errors ; even when one is older it is some¬ 
times done unwittingly, but the true scientific spirit sees only the truth 
growing from conclusions based on irrefutable facts. Therefore I 
would appeal to our younger members to keep an open mind, to w T eigh 
carefully the statements on which conclusions are based, to be ready 
to acknowledge that the certainties of to-day may be the un¬ 
certainties of to-morrow, that scientific progress is not maintained by 
assuming that the finality of knowledge in the smallest branch of our 
subject has been reached, but to strive to add to the facts already 
known, to help to fill up the yawning blanks which exist in our 
knowledge of every subject yet examined by human thought or explained 
by human endeavour. Each one can add some facts to our knowledge, 
if he will only concentrate his attention on some particular object and 
probe its mysteries deeply enough. 
