Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/353

Rh, he is extending his control in the sphere of nature and turning natural forces to his advantage.

The Study of Nature.—I now turn to another phase of the subject, viz.: to a consideration of the effect upon mental life of advances in the knowledge of natural phenomena. Let us, if possible, catch a glimpse of the edifice that has been built upon the foundation since the early naturalists broke ground and began operations.

One of the most notable things of the last half century has been the mental evolution produced by the great extension of knowledge of organic nature. This more intimate acquaintance with natural phenomena, and of living nature in particular, has altered our way of looking at the world, and especially of our relation to it. The whole fabric of thinking has been so profoundly changed by the biological advances to which I refer that all educated people ought to make themselves acquainted with the generalizations of biology and with the foundations upon which they rest. This science is not a remote branch of learning; it touches every-day life at many points, and affects our well-being more closely than is generally realized.

The study of nature and the explanation of natural phenomena possess an inherent interest to which most minds respond. The physicist and chemist have for their territory the field of inorganic nature, but the biologist has the advantage of dealing with the living world. There is, in reality, nothing in the sphere of knowledge more fascinating than the study of life. Any reference to the part that bacteria play in the world awakens a responsive interest. References to the doctrine of evolution, and the light it throws on the origin of the human body as well as on the races of animals, arouse attention. The teachings of science in reference to the life of the globe have awakened wonder, sometimes dissent, but always interest.

Zoology the Central Subject.—Now the kind of knowledge to which I am referring belongs to the domain of biology, and in that domain zoology is the central subject. Many people think of zoology as it was in the time of Linnæus, or, at best, as it was in the early part of the nineteenth century, when the spiritless activity of species-making was its prominent feature. It is no longer merely a mass of knowledge that enables its devotees to name animals and to arrange systematically a cabinet. Zoology of to-day is vastly different; it has become one of the leading departments of science. While dealing with the structure, the development and the evolution of animal life, it at the same time brings one into contact with those changes in human opinion for which its own advances have been largely responsible.

From the group of the natural sciences there emerges into prominent place the princely science of zoology. As was said before, it is the central subject in all that advance in the knowledge of organic nature to which reference has been made. It is best fitted, it seems to me, to give