10 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



beginning of our studies, would be either provisional and 

 incomplete, or else dogmatic. In some respects, indeed, a 

 definition should rather be the end of a science than its 

 opening. 



We shall study the phenomena of living organisms 

 analytically, by the aid of experiment ; our principal object 

 will be to find out laws in these phenomena ; such laws 

 will then be further analysed, and precisely at that point 

 we shall leave the realm of natural science proper. 



Our science is the highest of all natural sciences, for 

 it embraces as its final object the actions of man, at least 

 in so far as actions also are phenomena observable on living 

 bodies. 



But biology is also the most difficult of all natural 

 sciences, not only from the complexity of the phenomena, 

 which it studies, but in particular for another reason which 

 is seldom properly emphasised, and therefore will well repay 

 us for a few words devoted to it. 



Except so far as the " elements ' of chemistry come 

 into account, the experimenter in the inorganic fields of 

 nature is not hampered by the specificity of composite 

 objects : he makes all the combinations he wants. He is 

 always able to have at his disposal red rays of a desired 

 wave length when and where he wants, or to have, at a 

 given time and place, the precise amount of any organic 

 compound which he wishes to examine. And he forces 

 electricity and electromagnetism to obey his will, at least 

 with regard to space, time, and intensity of their appearance. 



The biologist is not able to " make " life, as the physicist 

 has made red rays or electromagnetism, or as the chemist 

 has made a certain compound of carbon. The biologist is 



