Implications of the Theories of Nerve Action 



by any amount whatever of analysis, but only through an 

 endless series of never-divorced analyses and syntheses, this 

 series running on through years of effort by scores of 

 investigators in the field (on the Pribilof Islands, on the 

 Behring Sea and far down into the North Pacific Ocean) 

 and in the laboratory, by general zoologists, mammalogists, 

 anatomists, embryologists, physiologists, comparative psy- 

 chologists, bio-chemists and physical chemists. 



How, let one ask himself, would the resolving of a fur 

 seal's behavior into reflexes as the simple elementary com- 

 ponents of that behavior, contribute to an understanding of 

 the annual oceanic migration of the animal or the fighting 

 of the males for the females, if that analysis accomplished 

 nothing beyond proving a certain measure of identity be- 

 tween the reflexes of a fur seal and, for instance, those of 

 an earthworm? Or how would the understanding sought 

 be enhanced by carrying the analysis to a still deeper level 

 to the physico-chemical level and discovering just how 

 oxygen, or some particular proteid substance, participates 

 in the reflex? We must never lose sight of what the biolo- 

 gist's task is as regards understanding. It is to investigate 

 for the purpose of understanding the facts presented by 

 living beings in nature. The behavior of the fur seal as the 

 animal lives its normal life is what is to be studied in the 

 case chosen, and one of the most characteristic things in 

 this particular behavior is a yearly journey of several thou- 

 sand miles through the Pacific Ocean. That is one of the 

 phenomena to be studied and understood, and no amount of 

 analysis resulting in discoveries which do not apply par- 

 ticularly to that particular phenomenon can be admitted 

 as an explanation of that phenomenon. As compared with 

 any of the other natural sciences, biology is preeminently 

 the science of individuals or natural objects which though 

 alike in innumerable attributes are unlike in innumerable 

 other attributes, and in no aspect of organisms do the dif- 



