Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/546

528 they had best study it; and I shall address myself to the endeavor 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 newfangled 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 two hundred 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 century that they recognize but one scientific method, applicable alike to man and to Nature, we find this notion of the existence of a broad distinction between Nature and man in the writings of Bacon and Hobbes of Malmesbury; and I have brought with me that famous work which is now so little known, greatly as it deserves to be studied, "The Leviathan," in order that I may put to you, in the wonderfully terse and clear language of Thomas Hobbes, what was his view of the matter. He says:

"The register of knowledge of fact is called history. Whereof there be two sorts: one called natural history; which is the history of such facts or effects of Nature as have no dependence on man's will; such as are the histories of metals, plants, animals, regions, and the like. The other is civil history; which is the history of the voluntary actions of men in commonwealths."

So that all history of fact was divided into these two great groups of natural and of civil history. The Royal Society was in course of foundation about the time that Hobbes was writing this book, which was published in 1651, and that Society is termed a "Society for the Advancement of Natural Knowledge," which is nearly the same thing as a "Society for the Advancement of Natural History." As time went on, and the various branches of human knowledge became more distinctly developed and separated from one another, it was found that some were much more susceptible of precise mathematical treatment than others. The publication of the "Principia" of Newton, which probably gave a greater stimulus to physical science than any work ever published before, or which is likely to be published hereafter, showed that precise mathematical methods were applicable to