tage in a sphere in which the difficulties of analysis and the chances of error are relatively greater. So long as we only think of science in connection with the so-called natural sciences, the true conception of science will not reveal itself to us, and education in general will remain unfructified by the scientific spirit. But when we reach the point of accepting the methods of physical science as far as they go, and applying them, with such modifications as the case may call for, to all other branches of knowledge, holding ever as our clew the idea of utility broadly and liberally understood, we shall be fairly on the way to that revolution, or rather transformation, of our educational systems which the new age demands.
THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND THE DARWINIAN THEORY.
It will be remembered that Lord Salisbury, in the address delivered by him last autumn as President of the British Association, laid stress on the difficulties which he found in the way of accepting the doctrine of evolution, and quoted in support of his position some observations made several years ago by Lord Kelvin. Lord Kelvin himself has now been delivering an annual address as President of the Royal Society, and part of his duty in connection therewith was to announce that the society had this year conferred the "Darwin Medal" on Prof. Huxley as a "token of the value put by the society on the part of his [Prof. Huxley's] scientific activity bearing more directly on the biological ideas with which the name of Charles Darwin will always be associated." That the Royal Society should have instituted a Darwin medal speaks plainly enough as to the hold which Darwin's theory of the origin of species has obtained upon the scientific world; and that the medal should have been awarded to so earnest and thoroughgoing a champion of that theory as Prof. Huxley is a plain indication that scientific opinion is not taking any backward steps in this matter. In referring to the award Lord Kelvin chose his words with evident care; but no fault could be found, so far as either Darwin or Huxley was concerned, with the following neatly turned sentences: "That advocacy [Prof. Huxley's] had one striking mark: while it made, or strove to make, clear how deep the new view went down, and how far it reached, it never shrank from striving to make equally clear the limits beyond which it could not go. In these latter days there is fear lest the view, once new but now familiar, may, through being stretched further than it will bear, seem to lose some of its real worth. We may well be glad that the advocate of The Origin of Species by Natural Selection, who once bore down its foes, is still among us, ready, if need be, to save it from its friends."
At a dinner which followed the meeting at which these words were uttered, Prof. Huxley having been called upon to respond to the toast of "The Medallists," took occasion to say that the theory propounded by Darwin "has never yet been shown to be inconsistent with any positive observations. . . . I am sincerely of the opinion," he added, "that the views which were propounded by Mr. Darwin thirty-four years ago will be understood hereafter to mark an epoch in the intellectual history of the human race. They will modify the whole system of our thoughts and opinions, and shape our most intimate convictions." In the face of such a declaration, delivered under the circumstances described, it would certainly be well if the honest and worthy people who are always flattering themselves on the strength, generally, of this or that pulpit utterance, that natural selection and the doctrine of evolution are exploded theories, would make up their minds that practical men of science are the best judges as to what theories are helpful, and so far deserv-
