Ehrlich would not recognize his epoch-making
views on immunity when this generation has finished with them. I believe
it was Hegel who said that progress is a series of negations--the
denial today of what was accepted yesterday, the contradiction by each
generation of some part at least of the philosophy of the last; but all
is not lost, the germ plasm remains, a nucleus of truth to be fertilized
by men often ignorant even of the body from which it has come. Knowledge
evolves, but in such a way that its possessors are never in sure
possession. "It is because science is sure of nothing that it is always
advancing" (Duclaux).
History is the biography of the mind of man, and its educational
value is in direct proportion to the completeness of our study of the
individuals through whom this mind has been manifested. I have tried
to take you back to the beginnings of science, and to trace its gradual
development, which is conditioned by three laws. In the first place,
like a living organism, truth grows, and its gradual evolution may
be traced from the tiny germ to the mature product. Never springing,
Minerva-like, to full stature at once, truth may suffer all the hazards
incident to generation and gestation.
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