E-text prepared by Clare Boothby, Jeremy Weatherford, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 16136-h.htm or 16136-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/1/3/16136/16136-h/16136-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/1/3/16136/16136-h.zip) AMERICAN ADDRESSES, WITH A LECTURE ON THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY by THOMAS H. HUXLEY. London: MacMillan and Co. London: R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor, Printers, Bread Street Hill, Queen Victoria Street. 1877 "Naturæ leges et regulæ, secundum quas omnia fiunt et ex unis formis in alias mutantur, sunt ubique et semper eadem." B. DE SPINOZA, _Ethices_, Pars tertia, Præfatio. CONTENTS. I. THREE LECTURES ON EVOLUTION (New York, September 18, 20, 22, 1876). LECTURE I. THE THREE HYPOTHESES RESPECTING THE HISTORY OF NATURE LECTURE II. THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION. THE NEUTRAL AND THE FAVOURABLE EVIDENCE LECTURE III. THE DEMONSTRATIVE EVIDENCE OF EVOLUTION II. AN ADDRESS ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY (Baltimore, September 12, 1876) III. A LECTURE ON THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY, IN CONNECTION WITH THE LOAN COLLECTION OF SCIENTIFIC APPARATUS (South Kensington Museum, December 16, 1876) NEW YORK. LECTURES ON EVOLUTION. LECTURE I. THE THREE HYPOTHESES RESPECTING THE HISTORY OF NATURE. We live in and form part of a system of things of immense diversity and perplexity, which we call Nature; and it is a matter of the deepest interest to all of us that we should form just conceptions of the constitution of that system and of its past history. With relation to this universe, man is, in extent, little more than a mathematical point; in duration but a fleeting shadow; he is a mere reed shaken in the winds of force. But, as Pascal long ago remarked, although a mere reed, he is a thinking reed; and in virtue of that wonderful capacity of thought, he has the power of framing for himself a symbolic conception of the universe, which, although doubtless highly imperfect and inadequate as a picture of the great whole, is yet sufficient to serve him as a chart for the guidance of his practical affairs. It has taken long ages of toilsome and often fruitless labour to enable man to look steadily at the shifting scenes of the phantasmagoria of Nature, to notice what is fixed among her fluctuations, and what is regular among her apparent irregularities; and it is only comparatively lately, within the last few centuries, that the conception of a universal order and of a definite course of things, which we term the course of Nature, has emerged.