Critiques and Addresses | Page 3

and has himself been deceived. But in that case, it is surely an imprudence on his part, to reproach me with having "read Suarez ad hoc, and evidently without the guidance of anyone familiar with that author." No doubt, in the matter of guidance, Mr. Mivart has the advantage of me. Nevertheless, the guides who supplied him with his references to Suarez' "Metaphysica," while they left him in ignorance of the existence of the "Tractatus," are guides with whose services it might be better to dispense; leaders who wilfully shut their eyes, being even more liable to lodge one in a ditch, than blind leaders.
At the time when the essay on "Methods and Results of Ethnology" was written, I had not met with a passage in Professor Max M��ller's "Last Results of Turanian Researches"[1] which shows so appositely, that the profoundest study of philology leads to conclusions respecting the relation of Ethnology with Philology, similar to those at which I had arrived in approaching the question from the Anatomist's side, that I cannot refrain from quoting it:
[Footnote 1: LONDON, April 1873.]
"Nor should we, in our phonological studies, either expect or desire more than general hints from physical ethnology. The proper and rational connection between the two sciences is that of mutual advice and suggestion, but nothing more. Much of the confusion of terms and indistinctness of principles, both in Ethnology and Phonology, are due to the combined study of these heterogeneous sciences. Ethnological race and phonological race are not commensurate, except in ante-historical times, or perhaps at the very dawn of history. With the migration of tribes, their wars, their colonies, their conquests and alliances, which, if we may judge from their effects, must have been much more violent in the ethnic, than even in the political, period of history, it is impossible to imagine that race and language should continue to run parallel. The physiologist should pursue his own science unconcerned about language."
It is further desirable to remark that the statements in this Essay respecting the forms of Native American crania need rectification. On this point, I refer the reader who is interested in the subject to my paper "On the Form of the Cranium among the Patagonians and the Fuegians" published in the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology for 1868.
If the problem discussed in my address to the British Association in 1870 has not yet received its solution, it is not because the champions of Abiogenesis have been idle, or wanting in confidence. But every new assertion on their side has been met by a counter assertion; and though the public may have been led to believe that so much noise must indicate rapid progress, one way or the other, an impartial critic will admit, with sorrow, that the question has been "marking time" rather than marching. In mere sound, these two processes are not so very different.

CONTENTS.
I.
ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM. (An Address delivered to the Members of the Midland Institute, on the 9th of October, 1871, and subsequently published in the _Fortnightly Review_)
II.
THE SCHOOL BOARDS: WHAT THEY CAN DO, AND WHAT THEY MAY DO. (The Contemporary Review, 1870)
III.
ON MEDICAL EDUCATION. (An Address to the Students of the Faculty of Medicine in University College, London, 1870)
IV.
YEAST. (The Contemporary Review, 1871)
V.
ON THE FORMATION OF COAL. (A Lecture delivered before the Members of the Bradford Philosophical Institution, and subsequently published in the _Contemporary Review_)
VI.
ON CORAL AND CORAL REEFS. (Good Words, 1870)
VII.
ON THE METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. (The Fortnightly Review, 1865)
VIII.
ON SOME FIXED POINTS IN BRITISH ETHNOLOGY. (The Contemporary Review, 1871)
IX.
PALAEONTOLOGY AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. (The Presidential Address to the Geological Society, 1870)
X.
MR. DARWIN'S CRITICS. (The Contemporary Review, 1871)
XI.
THE GENEALOGY OF ANIMALS. (A Review of Haeckel's "Nat��rliche Sch?pfungs-Geschichte." The Academy, 1869)
XII.
BISHOP BERKELEY ON THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION. _(Macmillan's Magazine_, 1871)

CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES.

I.
ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM.
(AN ADDRESS TO THE MEMBERS OF THE MIDLAND INSTITUTE, OCTOBER 9TH, 1871.)
To me, and, as I trust, to the great majority of those whom I address, the great attempt to educate the people of England which has just been set afoot, is one of the most satisfactory and hopeful events in our modern history. But it is impossible, even if it were desirable, to shut our eyes to the fact, that there is a minority, not inconsiderable in numbers, nor deficient in supporters of weight and authority, in whose judgment all this legislation is a step in the wrong direction, false in principle, and consequently sure to produce evil in practice.
The arguments employed by these objectors are of two kinds. The first is what I will venture to term the caste argument; for, if logically carried out, it would end in the separation of the people of this country into castes, as permanent and as sharply defined, if not as numerous, as those of India. It is maintained that