yond the limits set by the finite and restricted character of our
faculties, or destroy the endless unknown, which accompanies, like its
shadow, the endless procession of phenomena. So far as I can venture
to offer an opinion on such a matter, the purpose of our being
in existence, the highest object that human beings can set before
themselves, is not the pursuit of any such chimera as the annihilation
of the unknown; but it is simply the unwearied endeavour to remove its
boundaries a little further from our little sphere of action.

I wonder if any historian would for a moment admit the objection, that
it is preposterous to trouble ourselves about the history of the Roman
Empire, because we do not know anything positive about the origin and
first building of the city of Rome! Would it be a fair objection to
urge, respecting the sublime discoveries of a Newton, or a Kepler,
those great philosophers, whose discoveries have been of the profoundest
benefit and service to all men,--to say to them--"After all that you
have told us as to how the planets revolve, and how they are maintained
in their orbits, you cannot tell us what is the cause of the origin of
the sun, moon, and stars. So what is the use of what you have done?"
Yet these objections would not be one whit more preposterous than the
objections which have been made to the 'Origin of Species.' Mr. Darwin,
then, had a perfect right to limit his inquiry as he pleased, and the
only question for us--the inquiry being so limited--is to ascertain
whether the method of his inquiry is sound or unsound; whether he has
obeyed the canons which must guide and govern all investigation, or
whether he has broken them; and it was because our inquiry this evening
is essentially limited to that question, that I spent a good deal of
time in a former lecture (which, perhaps, some of you thought might
have been better employed), in endeavouring to illustrate the method
and nature of scientific inquiry in general. We shall now have to put in
practice the principles that I then laid down.

I stated to you in substance, if not in words, that wherever there
are complex masses of phenomena to be inquired into, whether they be
phenomena of the affairs of daily life, or whether they belong to the
more abstruse and difficult problems laid before the philosopher, our
course of proceeding in unravelling that complex chain of phenomena with
a view to get at its cause, is always the same; in all c