American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 123 pages of information about American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology.

American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 123 pages of information about American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology.

May the university which commences its practical activity to-morrow abundantly fulfil its high purpose; may its renown as a seat of true learning, a centre of free inquiry, a focus of intellectual light, increase year by year, until men wander hither from all parts of the earth, as of old they sought Bologna, or Paris, or Oxford.

And it is pleasant to me to fancy that, among the English students who are drawn to you at that time, there may linger a dim tradition that a countryman of theirs was permitted to address you as he has done to-day, and to feel as if your hopes were his hopes and your success his joy.

    [1] Delivered at the formal opening of the Johns Hopkins University
        at Baltimore, U.S., September 12.  The total amount bequeathed by
        Johns Hopkins is more than 7,000,000 dollars.  The sum of
        3,500,000 dollars is appropriated to a university, a like sum to
        a hospital, and the rest to local institutions of education and
        charity.

LONDON.

LECTURE ON THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY.

It is my duty to-night to speak about the study of Biology, and while it may be that there are many of my audience who are quite familiar with that study, yet as a lecturer of some standing, it would, I know by experience, be very bad policy on my part to suppose such to be extensively the case.  On the contrary, I must imagine that there are many of you who would like to know what Biology is; that there are others who have that amount of information, but would nevertheless gladly hear why it should be worth their while to study Biology; and yet others, again, to whom these two points are clear, but who desire to learn how they had best study it, and, finally, when they had best study it.

I shall, therefore, address myself to the endeavour to give you some answer to these four questions—­what Biology is; why it should be studied; how it should be studied; and when it should be studied.

In the first place, in respect to what Biology is, there are, I believe, some persons who imagine that the term “Biology” is simply a new-fangled denomination, a neologism in short, for what used to be known under the title of “Natural History;” but I shall try to show you, on the contrary, that the word is the expression of the growth of science during the last 200 years, and came into existence half a century ago.

At the revival of learning, knowledge was divided into two kinds—­the knowledge of nature and the knowledge of man; for it was the current idea then (and a great deal of that ancient conception still remains) that there was a sort of essential antithesis, not to say antagonism, between nature and man; and that the two had not very much to do with one another, except that the one was oftentimes exceedingly troublesome to the other.  Though it is one of the salient merits of our great philosophers of the seventeenth

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American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.