One would almost think this to be a self-evident proposition. I wonder what a scholar would say to the man who should undertake to criticise a difficult passage in a Greek play, but who obviously had not acquainted himself with the rudiments of Greek grammar. And yet, before giving positive opinions about these high questions of Biology, people not only do not seem to think it necessary to be acquainted with the grammar of the subject, but they have not even mastered the alphabet. You find criticism and denunciation showered about by persons, who, not only have not attempted to go through the discipline necessary to enable them to be judges, but who have not even reached that stage of emergence from ignorance in which the knowledge that such a discipline is necessary dawns upon the mind. I have had to watch with some attention--in fact I have been favoured with a good deal of it myself--the sort of criticism with which biologists and biological teachings are visited. I am told every now and then that there is a "brilliant article"[5] in so-and-so, in which we are all demolished. I used to read these things once, but I am getting old now, and I have ceased to attend very much to this cry of "wolf." When one does read any of these productions, what one finds generally, on the face of it, is that the brilliant critic is devoid of even the elements of biological knowledge, and that his brilliancy is like the light given out by the crackling of thorns under a pot of which Solomon speaks. So far as I recollect, Solomon makes use of the image for purposes of comparison; but I will not proceed further into that matter. Two things must be obvious: in the first place, that every man who has the interests of truth at heart must earnestly desire that every well-founded and just criticism that can be made should be made; but that, in the second place, it is essential to anybody's being able to benefit by criticism, that the critic should know what he is talking about, and be in a position to form a mental image of the facts symbolised by the words he uses. If not, it is as obvious in the case of a biological argument, as it is in that of a historical or philological discussion, that such criticism is a mere waste of time on the part of its author, and wholly undeserving of attention on the part of those who are criticised. Take it then as an illustration of the importance of biological study, that thereby alone are men able to form something like a rational conception of what constitutes valuable criticism of the teachings of biologists.[6]