"reflex action."

Of course there is a limit to this physiological self-examination. But
there is so close a solidarity between ourselves and our poor relations
of the animal world, that our inaccessible inward parts may be
supplemented by theirs. A comparative anatomist knows that a sheep's
heart and lungs, or eye, must not be confounded with those of a man;
but, so far as the comprehension of the elementary facts of the
physiology of circulation, of respiration, and of vision goes, the one
furnishes the needful anatomical data as well as the other.

Thus, it is quite possible to give instruction in elementary physiology
in such a manner as, not only to confer knowledge, which, for the
reason I have mentioned, is useful in itself; but to serve the purposes
of a training in accurate observation, and in the methods of reasoning
of physical science. But that is an advantage which I mention only
incidentally, as the present Conference does not deal with education in
the ordinary sense of the word.

It will not be suspected that I wish to make physiologists of all the
world. It would be as reasonable to accuse an advocate of the "three
R's" of a desire to make an orator, an author, and a mathematician of
everybody. A stumbling reader, a pot-hook writer, and an arithmetician
who has not got beyond the rule of three, is not a person of brilliant
acquirements; but the difference between such a member of society and
one who can neither read, write, nor cipher is almost inexpressible;
and no one nowadays doubts the value of instruction, even if it goes no
farther.

The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is, to my mind,