expect from your two Vice-Presidents, and from the chairman of the Chemical Subsection, addresses on the progress made during the past year, restrain me from invading their peculiar fields of labor, by alluding to scientific work which has been accomplished since our last meeting. While delicacy forbids me from so doing, I am equally debarred from repeating to you the brief sketch I endeavored to give at a former meeting,[1] of the history and present condition of entomology in the United States.
But it has appeared to me that a few thoughts, which have impressed themselves on my mind, touching the future results to be obtained from certain classes of facts, not yet fully developed, on account of the great labor required for their proper comparison, may not be without value. Even if the facts be not new to you, I hope to be able, with your kind attention, to present them in such way as to be suggestive of the work yet to be done.
It has been perhaps said, or at least it has been often thought, that the first mention of the doctrine of evolution, as now admitted to a greater or less degree by every thinking man, is found in Ecclesiastes i. 9:
"The thing that hath been, is that which shall be: and that which is done, is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us."
Other references to evolutionary views in one form or another occur in the writings of several philosophers of classic times, as you have had recent cause to remember.
Whether these are to be considered as an expression of a perfect truth in the very imperfect language which was alone intelligible to the nation to whom this sacred book was immediately addressed on the one hand, and the happy guesses of philosophers, who by deep intuition had placed themselves in close sympathy with the material universe, on the other hand, I shall not stop to inquire. The discussion would be profitless, for modern science in no way depends for its magnificent triumphs of fact and thought upon any utterances of the ancients. It is the creation of patient, intelligent labor of the last two centuries, and its results can be neither confuted nor confirmed by any thing that was said, thought, or done, at an earlier period. I have merely referred to these indications of doctrines of evolution to recall to your minds that the two great schools of thought, which now divide philosophers, have existed from very remote times. They are, therefore, in their origin, probably independent of correct scientific knowledge.
You have learned from the geologists, and mostly from those of
- ↑ Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Section xxi. (Portland).
