THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE 131 



aspects, under the designation minutism, the theory, that is, that the 

 " final explanation " of all things is to be found only in the excessively 

 small, mostly invisible parts or elements of those things. Hence the 

 idolatrous attitude which much of biology has long held toward cells, 

 nuclei, protoplasm, chromosomes, enzymes, biophores, determinants, 

 etc., and hence the exclusion to so large an extent from real biological 

 interest and endeavor, of organisms and parts of organisms which are 

 large enough to be easily examined without the aid of the microscope. 



The extent to which the zoology of our institutions of higher learn- 

 ing deals with invisible or difficultly visible animals ; scraps of dead 

 animals, and very small living animals either mutilated or placed in 

 wholly unnatural surroundings, is remarkable once one comes to look 

 at the situation broadly. The management of a zoological park or 

 museum, in need of a trained zoologist as superintendent or curator ; or 

 the director of an agricultural station who should want an expert on the 

 higher animal life of the region, might about as well appeal to a village 

 kindergarten or a corner grocery for men equipped for such positions as 

 to the department of zoology of most of the great universities of the 

 country. 



Persons who devote themselves to the study of living animals and 

 plants, especially rather large, common ones like mammals and birds, 

 and trees and grasses, and those who study the larger structural fea- 

 tures of these larger organisms, can not, according to the prevalent 

 view, be admitted to the small, inner-chambered class of philosophical 

 biologists, but must remain outside with the great commonality as 

 mere " mammal men " and " bird men," or, with some condescension, as 

 " mammalogists " and " ornithologists," and as mere " systematic 

 botanists." 



"We have made the sorry blunder of reasoning that since it has been 

 found impossible to make knowledge of organisms thoroughgoing at 

 any point without becoming microscopists and chemists, therefore, by 

 becoming these exclusively, after awhile we shall have plumbed the 

 deepest depths of the living world. 



The only justification for speaking of these family dissensions 

 within the biological household is that this much seemed necessarv as 

 preliminary to the expression of my conviction that should speculative 

 biology ever become as strongly dominated by a carefully thought-out, 

 wholesome metaphysics as it is now dominated by a meagerly informed, 

 badly reasoned, unwholesome metaphysics, human beings and the higher 

 animals and plants, taken living and whole, would be seen to be more 

 interesting than simpler organisms and parts of organisms, just in pro- 

 portion as the higher exceed the lower in complexity. 



This reassessment of the living world as to degrees of interest 

 would follow such a reformation in the metaphysics of biology since 



