ved from
error. It is not only in the coarser practical sense of the word
"utility," but in this higher and broader sense, that I measure the
value of the study of biology by its utility; and I shall try to point
out to you that you will feel the need of some knowledge of biology at a
great many turns of this present nineteenth century life of ours. For
example, most of us attach great importance to the conception which we
entertain of the position of man in this universe and his relation to
the rest of nature. We have almost all been told, and most of us hold by
the tradition, that man occupies an isolated and peculiar position in
nature; that though he is in the world he is not of the world; that his
relations to things about him are of a remote character; that his origin
is recent, his duration likely to be short, and that he is the great
central figure round which other things in this world revolve. But this
is not what the biologist tells us.

At the present moment you will be kind enough to separate me from them,
because it is in no way essential to my present argument that I should
advocate their views. Don't suppose that I am saying this for the
purpose of escaping the responsibility of their beliefs; indeed, at
other times and in other places, I do not think that point has been left
doubtful; but I want clearly to point out to you that for my present
argument they may all be wrong; and, nevertheless, my argument will hold
good. The biologists tell us that all this is an entire mistake. They
turn to the physical organisation of man. They examine his whole
structure, his bony frame and all that clothes it. They resolve him into
the finest particles into which the microscope will enable them to break
him up. They consider the performance of his various functions and
activities, and they look at the manner in which he occurs on the
surface of the world. Then they turn to other animals, and taking the
first handy domestic animal--say a dog--they profess to be able to
demonstrate that the analysis of the dog leads them, in gross, to
precisely the same results as the analysis of the man; that they find
almost identically the same bones, having the same relations; that they
can name the muscles of the dog by the names of the muscles of the man,
and the nerves of the dog by those of the nerves of the man, and that,
such structures and organs of sense as we find in the man such also we
find in the dog; they analyse the b