Edwin Ray Lankester

“ At one time men believed that history repeats itself, and it was thought to be a proper and useful training for one who would take part in public affairs to store his mind with precedents and picturesque narratives of prominent statesmen and rulers in far-off days and distant lands. As a matter of fact it cannot be shown that any statesman, or even the humblest politician, has ever been guided to useful action by such knowledge. History does not repeat itself, and the man who thinks that it does will be led by his fragmentary knowledge of stories of the past into serious blunders. ”

“ When simple curiosity passes into the love of knowledge as such, and the gratification of the æsthetic sense of the beauty of completeness and accuracy seems more desirable than the easy indolence of ignorance; when the finding out of the causes of things becomes a source of joy, and he is accounted happy who is successful in the search, common knowledge passes into what our forefathers called natural history, whence there is but a step to that which used to be termed natural philosphy, and now passes by the name of physical science. ”

“ Even the slight and rapid review just given of Man's position, face to face with Nature, enables us to see what a tremendous step he has taken, what desperate conditions he has created by the wonderful exercise of his will; how much he has done and can do to control the order of Nature, and how urgent it is, beyond all that words can say, for him to apply his whole strength and capacity to gaining further control, so that he may accomplish his destiny and escape from misery. ”

“ The delay in the establishment of the doctrine of organic evolution was due, not to the ignorant and unobservant, but to the leaders of zoological and botanical science. Knowing the almost endless complexity of organic structures, realizing that man himself with all the mystery of his life and consciousness must be included in any explanation of the origin of living things, they preferred to regard living things as something apart from the rest of nature, specially cared for, specially created by a Divine Being. ”

“ As a matter of fact the new knowledge of Nature—the newly-ascertained capacity of man for a control of Nature so thorough as to be almost unlimited—has not as yet had an opportunity for showing what it can do. A lull after victory, a lethargic contentment, has to some extent followed on the crowning triumphs of the great Nature-searchers whose days were numbered with the closing years of that nineteenth century which through them marks an epoch. ”

“ One of the most fascinating problems of biology is that involved in the attempt to trace out the pedigrees of the immense variety of living plants and animals according to the teachings of Charles Darwin. Every animal grows from a perfectly simple homogeneous egg to the more or less complicated form which it presents when adult, and we have reason to believe that the changes through which the growing developing "embryo" passes correspond to a large extent, according to certain definite laws, with the changes through which its ancestors have passed in the greater evolution of the world. ”

“ Those who enjoy great influence in the affairs of the University tell us with pride that Oxford not only determines what our best schools shall teach, but has, as a main pre-occupation, the education of statesmen, pro-consuls, leaders of the learned professions, and members of parliament! Undoubtedly this claim is well-founded, and its truth is the reason why we cannot be content with the maintenance by the University of the compulsory study of Greek and Latin, and the neglect to make the study of Nature an integral and predominant part of every man's education. ”

“ In this final state of knowledge the phenomena of nature are regarded as one continuous series of causes and effects; and the ultimate object of science is to trace out that series, from the term which is nearest to us, to that which is at the farthest limit accessible to our means of investigation. ”

“ Thus comparative anatomy came into existence as a branch of inquiry apart from zoology, and it was only in the latter part of the 19th century that the limitation of the word “zoology” to a knowledge of animals which expressly excludes the consideration of their internal structure was rejected by the general consent of those concerned in the progress of science. It is now generally recognized that it is mere tautology to speak of zoology and comparative anatomy, and that museum naturalists must give attention as well to the inside as to the outside of animals. ”

“ The 'return to Nature,' which is sometimes vaguely put forward as a cure for the all-pervading 'taedium' of this age, is perhaps an imperfect expression of the truth that it is time for civilized man not to return to the 'state of Nature,' but to abandon his retrospective attitude and to take up whole-heartedly the Kingdom of Nature which it is his destiny to rule. New hope, new life will, when he does this, be infused into every line of human activity: Art will acquire a new impulse, and politics become real and interesting. ”

“ The great joys of Art, the delights and entertainment to be derived from the romance and history of human character, are not parts of it. They must never be neglected. But are we not justified in asserting that, for some two hundred years or more, these 'entertainments' have been pursued in the name of the highest education and study to the exclusion of the far weightier and more necessary knowledge of Nature? ”

“ It is not generally realized how severe is the pressure and competition in Nature—not between different species, but between the immature population of one and the same species, precisely because they are of the same species and have exactly the same needs. From a human point of view the pressure under which many wild things live is awful in its severity and relentless tenacity. Not only are new forms established by natural selection, but the old forms, when they exactly fit the mould presented as it were for competitive filling, are maintained by the same unremitting process. ”

“ It is said that she may well be reserved for these delightful pursuits, whilst newer institutions should do the hard work of aiding man in his conquest of Nature. At first sight such a proposal has a tempting character: we are charmed with the suggestion that our beautiful Oxford should be enclosed by a ring fence and cut off for ever from the contamination of the world. But a few moments reflection must convince most of us that such a treatment of Oxford is an insult to her and an impossibility. Oxford is not dead. ”

“ It is a sad and apparently inevitable accompaniment of all discussion of this matter that those who advocate a great and leading position for the knowledge of Nature in education are accused of desiring to abolish all study of literature, history, and philosophy. This is, in reality, so far from being the case that we should most of us wish to see a serviceable knowledge of foreign languages, and a real acquaintance with the beauties of English and other literature, substituted for the present unsuccessful efforts to teach effectively either the language or literature of the Greeks and Romans. ”

“ Man is held to be a part of Nature, a product of the definite and orderly evolution which is universal; a being resulting from and driven by the one great nexus of mechanism which we call Nature. He stands alone, face to face with that relentless mechanism. It is his destiny to understand and to control it. ”

“ Yet it is the fact that this immensely important control of a great and constant danger and injury to mankind is left to the unorganized inquiries of a few enthusiasts. So little is this matter understood or appreciated, that those who are responsible for the welfare of States, with the rarest exceptions, do not even know that such protection is possible, and others again are so far from an intelligent view as to its importance, that they actually entertain the opinion that it would be a good thing were there more disease in order to get rid of the weakly surplus population! ”

“ Or again we may think of him as the heir to a vast and magnificent kingdom who has been finally educated so as to fit him to take possession of his property, and is at length left alone to do his best; he has wilfully abrogated, in many important respects, the laws of his mother Nature by which the kingdom was hitherto governed; he has gained some power and advantage by so doing, but is threatened on every hand by dangers and disasters hitherto restrained: no retreat is possible—his only hope is to control, as he knows that he can, the sources of these dangers and disasters. ”

“ It was Darwin's merit to show that a process of selection which he called 'Natural Selection' must take place in the free untouched conditions under which animals and plants exist, and have existed for ages, on this globe. Both animals and plants produce germs, or young, in excess—usually in vast excess. The world, the earth's surface, is practically full, that is to say, fully occupied. Only one pair of young can grow up to take the place of the pair—male and female—which have launched a dozen, or it may be as many as a hundred thousand, young individuals on the world. ”

“ We know really nothing of the heredity of mental qualities, nor how to estimate their presence or absence in the young so as to develop the mind to greatest advantage. We know the pain and the penalty of muscular fatigue, but we play with the brains of young and old as though they were indestructible machinery. What is called experimental psychology is only in its infancy, but it is of urgent necessity that it should be systematically pursued by the application of public funds in order that Man may know how to make the best use of his only weapon in his struggle to control Nature. ”

“ Six weeks ago I was enabled to examine in the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the minute spiral thread which has just been discovered and shown to be the cause of the most terrible and widely spread of human diseases, destroying the health and strength of those whom it does not kill and damaging the lives of their children, so that it has been justly said that this malady and the use of alcohol as a beverage are together responsible for more than half the disease and early death of the mature population of Europe. ”

“ It has become more and more a matter of conviction to me—and I believe that I share that conviction with a large body of fellow students both in this country and other civilized states—that the time has arrived when the true relation of Nature to Man has been so clearly ascertained that it should be more generally known than is at present the case, and that this knowledge should form far more largely than it does at this moment, the object of human activity and endeavour—that it should be, in fact, the guide of state-government and the trusted basis of the development of human communities. ”

“ We boldly operate upon the minds of children in our systems of education without really knowing what we are doing. We blindly assume that the owners of certain minds, traditionally trained in amusing elegancies, are fit to govern their fellow men and administer vast provinces; we assume that the discovery and comprehension of Nature's processes must be the work of very few and peculiar minds; that if we take care of the body the mind will take care of itself. ”

“ To return to my original contention—the knowledge and control of Nature is Man's destiny and his greatest need. To enable future leaders of the community to comprehend this, to perceive what the knowledge and control of Nature are, and what are the steps by which they are gained and increased, is the duty of a great University. ”

“ It differs essentially in this—that in Nature's struggle for existence, death, immediate obliteration, is the fate of the vanquished, whilst the only reward to the victors—few, very few, but rare and beautiful in the fitness which has carried them to victory—is the permission to reproduce their kind—to carry on by heredity to another generation the specific qualities by which they triumphed. ”

“ But it will not be done for many years because of the ignorance and unbelief of those who alone can act for the community in such matters. The discovery—the presentation to the eye and to exploring manipulation—of that well-nigh ultra-microscopic germ of death, seemed to me, as I gazed at its delicate shape, a thing of greater significance to mankind than the emendation of a Greek text or the determination of the exact degree of turpitude of the statesmen of a bygone age. ”

“ It is not unfitting that a son of Oxford should in the fullness of time place before his Alma Mater conclusions which he has formed on a matter of serious and far-reaching importance. Oxford has been said to be the home of lost causes. It is true that her hospitality and benevolence are such that she is the home both of causes which triumph and of causes which are defeated ”

“ To a community which believes in the destiny of Man as the controller of Nature, and has consciously entered upon its fulfilment, there can be none of the weariness and even despair which comes from an exclusive worship of the past. ”