Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/863

Rh made in our grasp of the nature of that varying collection of molecular conditions, potencies, and changes, slimy hitherto to the intellectual no less than to the physical touch, which we are in the habit of denoting by the word protoplasm." Here "the animal physiologist touches hands with the botanist, and both find that under different names they are striving toward the same end." The learned professor recognized that it would be inopportune "to plunge into the deep waters of the relation which the body bears to the mind," but this, he declared, we know, "that changes in what we call the body bring about changes in what we call the mind." If, therefore, in the coming years a clearer knowledge shall be gained of "the nature and conditions of that molecular dance which is to us the token of nervous action," and if "a fuller, exacter knowledge of the laws which govern the sweep of nervous impulses along fiber and cell give us wider and directer command over the molding of the growing nervous mechanism and the maintenance and regulation of the grown one, then assuredly physiology will take its place as a judge of appeal in questions not only of the body but of the mind; it will raise its voice not in the hospital and consulting room only, but also in the senate and the school." These are eloquent words, but their eloquence is the least part of their merit; the preponderant part lies in the truth they contain—a truth which at this very moment it has become urgently necessary to proclaim in face of the fanatical doctrines of the absolute supremacy of mind or spirit which are running like wildfire through certain sections of supposedly educated communities.

Wherever scientific men congregate there the name of Darwin is sure to be mentioned with honor. Prof. Foster, in the address to which we have just referred, spoke of his '"pregnant ideas" as having "swayed physiology in the limited sense of that word as well as that broader study of living beings which we sometimes call biology, as indeed they have every branch of natural knowledge." The President of the Anthropological Section, Sir William Turner, spoke of the "enormous impulse given to the study of the anatomy of man in comparison with the lower animals by Charles Darwin's ever memorable treatise on the Origin of Species." According to the President of the Botanical Section, Prof. Marshall Ward, whose address yielded to none in the wealth of interesting facts and principles it unfolded, recent comparative studies, both of existing and of fossil plants, "are yielding at every turn new building stones and explanatory charts of the edifice of evolution on the lines laid down by Darwin." Not less ample were the acknowledgments of the value of Darwin's work made by Prof. Miall, President of the Zoölogical Section. "I do not," he said, "lay it down as an article of the scientific faith that Darwin's theories are to be taken as true; we shall refute any or all of them as soon as we know how; but it is a great thing that he raised so many questions that were well worth raising. He set all scientific minds fermenting, and not only zoölogy and botany, but paleontology, history, and even philology bear some mark of his activity. We owe as many discoveries to his sympathy with living Nature as to his exactness or his candor, though these two were illustrious. A young student anxious to be useful may feel sure that he is not wasting his time if he is collecting or verifying facts which would have helped Darwin."

Apart from his reference to Darwin, there were many interesting