Bacon, and other alchemists of former ages, would soon be dropped from the list of chemists and ranked with dreamers and speculators.
What I have said is, in my humble opinion, warranted by the departure Darwin and others have made from true science in their purely speculative studies; and neither he nor any other searcher after truth expects to hazard great and startling opinions without at the same time courting and desiring criticism; yet dissension from his views in no way proves him wrong—it only shows how his ideas impress the minds of other men. And just here let me contrast the daring of Darwin with the position assumed by one of the great French naturalists of the present day, Prof. Quatrefages, in a recent discourse of his on the physical character of the human race. In referring to the question of the first origin of man, he says distinctly that, in his opinion, it is one that belongs not to science; these questions are treated by theologians and philosophers: "Neither here nor at the Museum am I, nor do I wish to be, either a theologian or a philosopher. I am simply a man of science; and it is in the name of comparative physiology, of botanical and zoological geography, of geology and paleontology, in the name of the laws which govern man as well as animals and plants, that I have always spoken." And, studying man as a scientist, he goes on to say: "It is established that man has two grand faculties, of which we find not even a trace among animals. He alone has the moral sentiment of good and evil; he alone believes in a future existence succeeding this natural life; he alone believes in beings superior to himself, that he has never seen, and that are capable of influencing his life for good or evil; in other words, man alone is endowed with morality and religion." Our own distinguished naturalist and associate, Prof. Agassiz, reverts to this theory of evolution in the same positive manner, and with such earnestness and warmth as to call forth severe editorial criticisms, by his speaking of it as a "mere mine of assertions," and the "danger of stretching inferences from a few observations to a wide field;" and he is called upon to collect "real observations to disprove the evolution hypothesis." I would here remark, in defence of my distinguished friend, that scientific investigation will assume a curious phase when its votaries are required to occupy time in looking up facts, and seriously attempting to disprove any and every hypothesis based upon proof, some of it not even rising to the dignity of circumstantial evidence.
I now come to the last point to which I wish to call the attention of the members of the Association in the pursuit of their investigations, and the speculations that these give rise to in their minds. Reference has already been made to the tendency of quitting the physical to revel in the metaphysical, which, however, is not peculiar to this age, for it belonged as well to the times of Plato and Aristotle as it does to ours. More special reference will be made here to the proclivity of the present epoch among philosophers and theologians to be
