point to consider is: What ground does it cover? I have said that, in
its strict technical sense, it denotes all the phenomena which are
exhibited by living things, as distinguished from those which are not
living; but while that is all very well, so long as we confine ourselves
to the lower animals and to plants, it lands us in considerable
difficulties when we reach the higher forms of living things. For
whatever view we may entertain about the nature of man, one thing is
perfectly certain, that he is a living creature. Hence, if our
definition is to be interpreted strictly, we must include man and all
his ways and works under the head of Biology; in which case, we should
find that psychology, politics, and political economy would be absorbed
into the province of Biology. In fact, civil history would be merged in
natural history. In strict logic it may be hard to object to this
course, because no one can doubt that the rudiments and outlines of our
own mental phenomena are traceable among the lower animals. They have
their economy and their polity, and if, as is always admitted, the
polity of bees and the commonwealth of wolves fall within the purview of
the biologist proper, it becomes hard to say why we should not include
therein human affairs, which in so many cases resemble those of the bees
in zealous getting, and are not without a certain parity in the
proceedings of the wolves. The real fact is that we biologists are a
self-sacrificing people; and inasmuch as, on a moderate estimate, there
are about a quarter of a million different species of animals and plants
to know about already, we feel that we have more than sufficient
territory. There has been a sort of practical convention by which we
give up to a different branch of science what Bacon and Hobbes would
have called "Civil History." That branch of science has constituted
itself under the head of Sociology. I may use phraseology which, at
present, will be well understood and say that we have allowed that
province of Biology to become autonomous; but I should like you to
recollect that that is a sacrifice, and that you should not be surprised
if it occasionally happens that you see a biologist apparently
trespassing in the region of philosophy or politics; or meddling with
human education; because, after all, that is a part of his kingdom which
he has only voluntarily forsaken.
Having now defined the meaning of the word Biology, and having indicated
the general scope of Biological Science, I turn to my second question,
which is--Why should we study Biology? Possibly the time may come when
that will seem a very odd question. That we, living creatures, should
not feel a certain amount of interest in what it is that constitutes our
life will eventually, under altered ideas of the fittest objects of
human inquiry, appear to be a singular phenomenon; but, at present,
judging by the practice of teachers and educators, Biology would seem to
be a topic that does not concern us at all. I propose to put before you
a few considerations with which I dare say many will be familiar
already, but which will suffice to show--not fully, because to
demonstrate this point fully would take a great many lectures--that
there are some very good and substantial reasons why it may be advisable
that we should know something about this branch of human learning.
I myself entirely agree with another sentiment of the philosopher of
Malmesbury, "that the scope of all speculation is the performance of
some action or thing to be done," and I have not any very great respect
for, or interest in, mere knowing as such. I judge of the value of human
pursuits by their bearing upon human interests; in other words, by their
utility; but I should like that we should quite clearly understand what
it is that we mean by this word "utility." In an Englishman's mouth it
generally means that by which we get pudding or praise, or both. I have
no doubt that is one meaning of the word utility, but it by no means
includes all I mean by utility. I think that knowledge of every kind is
useful in proportion as it tends to give people right ideas, which are
essential to the foundation of right practice, and to remove wrong
ideas, which are the no less essential foundations and fertile mothers
of every description of error in practice. And inasmuch as, whatever
practical people may say, this world is, after all, absolutely governed
by ideas, and very often by the wildest and most hypothetical ideas, it
is a matter of the very greatest importance that our theories of things,
and even of things that seem a long way apart from our daily lives,
should be as far as possible true, and as far as possible removed from
error. It is not only in the coarser practical sense of the word
"utility," but in this higher and broader sense, that I measure the
value of the study of biology by its utility; and I shall try to point
out to you that you will feel the need of some knowledge of biology at a
great many turns of this present nineteenth century life of ours. For
example, most of us attach great importance to the conception which we
entertain of the position of man in this universe and his relation to
the rest of nature. We have almost all been told, and most of us hold by
the tradition, that man occupies an isolated and peculiar position in
nature; that though he is in the world he is not of the world; that his
relations to things about him are of a remote character; that his origin
is recent, his duration likely to be short, and that he is the great
central figure round which other things in this world revolve. But this
is not what the biologist tells us.
At the present moment you will be kind enough to separate me from them,
because it is in no way essential to my present argument that I should
advocate their views. Don't suppose that I am saying this for the
purpose of escaping the responsibility of their beliefs; indeed, at
other times and in other places, I do not think that point has been left
doubtful; but I want clearly to point out to you that for my present
argument they may all be wrong; and, nevertheless, my argument will hold
good. The biologists tell us that all this is an entire mistake. They
turn to the physical organisation of man. They examine his whole
structure, his bony frame and all that clothes it. They resolve him into
the finest particles into which the microscope will enable them to break
him up. They consider the performance of his various functions and
activities, and they look at the manner in which he occurs on the
surface of the world. Then they turn to other animals, and taking the
first handy domestic animal--say a dog--they profess to be able to
demonstrate that the analysis of the dog leads them, in gross, to
precisely the same results as the analysis of the man; that they find
almost identically the same bones, having the same relations; that they
can name the muscles of the dog by the names of the muscles of the man,
and the nerves of the dog by those of the nerves of the man, and that,
such structures and organs of sense as we find in the man such also we
find in the dog; they analyse the brain and spinal cord, and they find
that the nomenclature which fits the one answers for the other. They
carry their microscopic inquiries in the case of the dog as far as they
can, and they find that his body is resolvable into the same elements as
those of the man. Moreover, they trace back the dog's and the man's
development, and they find that, at a certain stage of their existence,
the two creatures are not distinguishable the one from the other; they
find that the dog and his kind have a certain distribution over the
surface of the world, comparable in its way to the distribution of the
human species. What is true of the dog they tell us is true of all the
higher animals; and they assert that they can lay down a common plan for
the whole of these creatures, and regard the man and the dog, the horse
and the ox as minor modifications of one great fundamental unity.
Moreover, the investigations of the last three-quarters of a century
have proved, they tell us, that similar inquiries, carried out through
all the different kinds of animals which are met with in nature, will
lead us, not in one straight series, but by many roads, step by step,
gradation by gradation, from man, at the summit, to specks of animated
jelly at the bottom of the series. So that the idea of Leibnitz, and of
Bonnet, that animals form a great scale of being, in which there are a
series of gradations from the most complicated form to the lowest and
simplest; that idea, though not exactly in the form in which it was
propounded by those philosophers, turns out to be substantially correct.
More than this, when biologists pursue their investigations into the
vegetable world, they find that they can, in the same way, follow out
the structure of the plant, from the most gigantic and complicated trees
down through a similar series of gradations, until they arrive at specks
of animated jelly, which they are puzzled to distinguish from those
specks which they reached by the animal road.
Thus, biologists have arrived at the conclusion that a fundamental
uniformity of structure pervades the animal and vegetable worlds, and
that plants and animals differ from one another simply as diverse
modifications of the same great general plan.
Again, they tell us the same story in regard to the study of function.
They admit the large and important interval which, at the present time,
separates the manifestations of the mental faculties observable in the
higher forms of mankind, and even in the lower forms, such as we know
them, from those exhibited by other animals; but, at the same time, they
tell us that the foundations, or rudiments, of almost all the faculties
of man are to be met with in the lower animals; that there is a unity of
mental faculty as well as of bodily structure, and that, here also, the
difference is a difference of degree and not of kind. I said "almost
all," for a reason. Among the many distinctions which have been drawn
between the lower creatures and ourselves, there is one which is hardly
ever insisted on,[4] but which may be very fitly spoken of in a place so
largely devoted to Art as that in which we are assembled. It is this,
that while, among various kinds of animals, it is possible to discover
traces of all the other faculties of man, especially the faculty of
mimicry, yet that particular form of mimicry which shows itself in the
imitation of form, either by modelling or by drawing, is not to be met
with. As far as I know, there is no sculpture or modelling, and
decidedly no painting or drawing, of animal origin, I mention the fact,
in order that such comfort may be derived therefrom as artists may feel
inclined to take.
If what the biologists tell us is true, it will be needful to get rid of
our erroneous conceptions of man, and of his place in nature, and to
substitute right ones for them. But it is impossible to form any
judgment as to whether the biologists are right or wrong, unless we are
able to appreciate the nature of the arguments which they have to offer.
One would almost think this to be a self-evident proposition. I wonder
what a scholar would say to the man who should undertake to criticise a
difficult passage in a Greek play, but who obviously had not acquainted
himself with the rudiments of Greek grammar. And yet, before giving
positive opinions about these high questions of Biology, people not only
do not seem to think it necessary to be acquainted with the grammar of
the subject, but they have not even mastered the alphabet. You find
criticism and denunciation showered about by persons, who, not only have
not attempted to go through the discipline necessary to enable them to
be judges, but who have not even reached that stage of emergence from
ignorance in which the knowledge that such a discipline is necessary
dawns upon the mind. I have had to watch with some attention--in fact I
have been favoured with a good deal of it myself--the sort of criticism
with which biologists and biological teachings are visited. I am told
every now and then that there is a "brilliant article"[5] in so-and-so,
in which we are all demolished. I used to read these things once, but I
am getting old now, and I have ceased to attend very much to this cry of
"wolf." When one does read any of these productions, what one finds
generally, on the face of it, is that the brilliant critic is devoid of
even the elements of biological knowledge, and that his brilliancy is
like the light given out by the crackling of thorns under a pot of which
Solomon speaks. So far as I recollect, Solomon makes use of the image
for purposes of comparison; but I will not proceed further into that
matter.
Two things must be obvious: in the first place, that every man who has
the interests of truth at heart must earnestly desire that every
well-founded and just criticism that can be made should be made; but
that, in the second place, it is essential to anybody's being able to
benefit by criticism, that the critic should know what he is talking
about, and be in a position to form a mental image of the facts
symbolised by the words he uses. If not, it is as obvious in the case of
a biological argument, as it is in that of a historical or philological
discussion, that such criticism is a mere waste of time on the part of
its author, and wholly undeserving of attention on the part of those who
are criticised. Take it then as an illustration of the importance of
biological study, that thereby alone are men able to form something like
a rational conception of what constitutes valuable criticism of the
teachings of biologists.[6]
Next, I may mention another bearing of biological knowledge--a more
practical one in the ordinary sense of the word. Consider the theory of
infectious disease. Surely that is of interest to all of us. Now the
theory of infectious disease is rapidly being elucidated by biological
study. It is possible to produce, from among the lower animals, examples
of devastating diseases which spread in the same manner as our
infectious disorders, and which are certainly and unmistakably caused by
living organisms. This fact renders it possible, at any rate, that that
doctrine of the causation of infectious disease which is known under the
name of "the germ theory" may be well-founded; and, if so, it must needs
lead to the most important practical measures in dealing with those
terrible visitations. It may be well that the general, as well as the
professional, public should have a sufficient knowledge of biological
truths to be able to take a rational interest in the discussion of such
problems, and to see, what I think they may hope to see, that, to those
who possess a sufficient elementary knowledge of Biology, they are not
all quite open questions.
Let me mention another important practical illustration of the value of
biological study. Within the last forty years the theory of agriculture
has been revolutionised. The researches of Liebig, and those of our own
Lawes and Gilbert, have had a bearing upon that branch of industry the
importance of which cannot be overestimated; but the whole of these new
views have grown out of the better explanation of certain processes
which go on in plants; and which, of course, form a part of the
subject-matter of Biology.
I might go on multiplying these examples, but I see that the clock won't
wait for me, and I must therefore pass to the third question to which I
referred: Granted that Biology is something worth studying, what is the
best way of studying it? Here I must point out that, since Biology is a
physical science, the method of studying it must needs be analogous to
that which is followed in the other physical sciences. It has now long
been recognised that, if a man wishes to be a chemist, it is not only
necessary that he should read chemical books and attend chemical
lectures, but that he should actually perform the fundamental
experiments in the laboratory for himself, and thus learn exactly what
the words which he finds in his books and hears from his teachers, mean.
If he does not do so, he may read till the crack of doom, but he will
never know much about chemistry. That is what every chemist will tell
you, and the physicist will do the same for his branch of science. The
great changes and improvements in physical and chemical scientific
education, which have taken place of late, have all resulted from the
combination of practical teaching with the reading of books and with the
hearing of lectures. The same thing is true in Biology. Nobody will ever
know anything about Biology except in a dilettante "paper-philosopher"
way, who contents himself with reading books on botany, zoology, and the
like; and the reason of this is simple and easy to understand. It is
that all language is merely symbolical of the things of which it treats;
the more complicated the things, the more bare is the symbol, and the
more its verbal definition requires to be supplemented by the
information derived directly from the handling, and the seeing, and the
touching of the thing symbolised:--that is really what is at the bottom
of the whole matter. It is plain common sense, as all truth, in the long
run, is only common sense clarified. If you want a man to be a tea
merchant, you don't tell him to read books about China or about tea, but
you put him into a tea-merchant's office where he has the handling, the
smelling, and the tasting of tea. Without the sort of knowledge which
can be gained only in this practical way, his exploits as a tea merchant
will soon come to a bankrupt termination. The "paper-philosophers" are
under the delusion that physical science can be mastered as literary
accomplishments are acquired, but unfortunately it is not so. You may
read any quantity of books, and you may be almost as ignorant as you
were at starting, if you don't have, at the back of your minds, the
change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through
the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.
It may be said:--"That is all very well, but you told us just now that
there are probably something like a quarter of a million different kinds
of living and extinct animals and plants, and a human life could not
suffice for the examination of one-fiftieth part of all these." That is
true, but then comes the great convenience of the way things are
arranged; which is, that although there are these immense numbers of
different kinds of living things in existence, yet they are built up,
after all, upon marvellously few plans.
There are certainly more than 100,000 species of insects, and yet
anybody who knows one insect--if a properly chosen one--will be able to
have a very fair conception of the structure of the whole. I do not mean
to say he will know that structure thoroughly, or as well as it is
desirable he should know it; but he will have enough real knowledge to
enable him to understand what he reads, to have genuine images in his
mind of those structures which become so variously modified in all the
forms of insects he has not seen. In fact, there are such things as
types of form among animals and vegetables, and for the purpose of
getting a definite knowledge of what constitutes the leading
modifications of animal and plant life, it is not needful to examine
more than a comparatively small number of animals and plants.
Let me tell you what we do in the biological laboratory which is lodged
in a building adjacent to this. There I lecture to a class of students
daily for about four-and-a-half months, and my class have, of course,
their text-books; but the essential part of the whole teaching, and that
which I regard as really the most important part of it, is a laboratory
for practical work, which is simply a room with all the appliances
needed for ordinary dissection. We have tables properly arranged in
regard to light, microscopes, and dissecting instruments, and we work
through the structure of a certain number of animals and plants. As, for
example, among the plants, we take a yeast plant, a _Protococcus_, a
common mould, a _Chara_, a fern, and some flowering plant; among animals
we examine such things as an _Amoeba_, a _Vorticella_, and a
fresh-water polype. We dissect a star-fish, an earth-worm, a snail, a
squid, and a fresh-water mussel. We examine a lobster and a cray-fish,
and a black beetle. We go on to a common skate, a cod-fish, a frog, a
tortoise, a pigeon, and a rabbit, and that takes us about all the time
we have to give. The purpose of this course is not to make skilled
dissectors, but to give every student a clear and definite conception,
by means of sense-images, of the characteristic structure of each of the
leading modifications of the animal kingdom; and that is perfectly
possible, by going no further than the length of that list of forms
which I have enumerated. If a man knows the structure of the animals I
have mentioned, he has a clear and exact, however limited, apprehension
of the essential features of the organisation of all those great
divisions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms to which the forms I have
mentioned severally belong. And it then becomes possible for him to read
with profit; because every time he meets with the name of a structure,
he has a definite image in his mind of what the name means in the
particular creature he is reading about, and therefore the reading is
not mere reading. It is not mere repetition of words; but every term
employed in the description, we will say, of a horse, or of an elephant,
will call up the image of the things he had seen in the rabbit, and he
is able to form a distinct conception of that which he has not seen, as
a modification of that which he has seen.
I find this system to yield excellent results; and I have no hesitation
whatever in saying, that any one who has gone through such a course,
attentively, is in a better position to form a conception of the great
truths of Biology, especially of morphology (which is what we chiefly
deal with), than if he had merely read all the books on that topic put
together.
The connection of this discourse with the Loan Collection of Scientific
Apparatus arises out of the exhibition in that collection of certain
aids to our laboratory work. Such of you as have visited that very
interesting collection may have noticed a series of diagrams and of
preparations illustrating the structure of a frog. Those diagrams and
preparations have been made for the use of the students in the
biological laboratory. Similar diagrams and preparations illustrating
the structure of all the other forms of life we examine, are either made
or in course of preparation. Thus the student has before him, first, a
picture of the structure he ought to see; secondly, the structure itself
worked out; and if with these aids, and such needful explanations and
practical hints as a demonstrator can supply, he cannot make out the
facts for himself in the materials supplied to him, he had better take
to some other pursuit than that of biological science.
I should have been glad to have said a few words about the use of
museums in the study of Biology, but I see that my time is becoming
short, and I have yet another question to answer. Nevertheless I must,
at the risk of wearying you, say a word or two upon the important
subject of museums. Without doubt there are no helps to the study of
Biology, or rather to some branches of it, which are, or may be, more
important than natural history museums; but, in order to take this place
in regard to Biology, they must be museums of the future. The museums of
the present do not, by any means, do so much for us as they might do. I
do not wish to particularise, but I dare say many of you, seeking
knowledge, or in the laudable desire to employ a holiday usefully, have
visited some great natural history museum. You have walked through a
quarter of a mile of animals, more or less well stuffed, with their long
names written out underneath them; and, unless your experience is very
different from that of most people, the upshot of it all is that you
leave that splendid pile with sore feet, a bad headache, and a general
idea that the animal kingdom is a "mighty maze without a plan." I do not
think that a museum which brings about this result does all that may be
reasonably expected from such an institution. What is needed in a
collection of natural history is that it should be made as accessible
and as useful as possible, on the one hand to the general public, and on
the other to scientific workers. That need is not met by constructing a
sort of happy hunting-ground of miles of glass cases; and, under the
pretence of exhibiting everything, putting the maximum amount of
obstacle in the way of those who wish properly to see anything.