Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 29th, 1867 (IA b22315263).pdf/33

Rh ground obtained, than materially advancing,—we of this nineteenth century find ourselves in another scientific epoch, and we are in the midst of labours extended in innumerable directions, in a measure that could not have entered into the imaginations of the earlier philosophers.

It is possible that future generations may not attribute to our age any one gigantic revelation, such as those which we owe to Harvey and to Newton; but a vista is opening which discloses the almost certain prospect that the results of inquiries now being pushed forward with so much vigour will concentrate in the discovery of some single comprehensive law, and that that law will be applicable to all that is now mysterious in the organic system of creation. As, in the former scientific period, the labourers were few and the topics of investigation limited, now, on the contrary, the labourers are many and the subjects diverse. In every department, the progress of one is applicable to the researches of the other; all are on the same track—all verging to one common end.