132 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



it would be seen that higher and the highest organisms are just as 

 " ultimate/' just as " fundamental/' as are the lower and lowest organ- 

 isms, and that the whole of any organism is as " ultimate " and " fun- 

 damental " as are any of its parts. 



What this means said in every-day language is that a sorely defect- 

 ive general theory, or philosophy of living things, is preventing the 

 recognized leaders in biological science from having any vital interest 

 in the actual, living plants and animals with which common observa- 

 tion and intelligence come in contact. 



So far my point has been that we can not interpret plant and animal 

 life broadly and soundly either in technical science or in common in- 

 telligence unless the esthetic side of our nature joins with the intel- 

 lectual side in determining our attitude toward the beings we deal with. 

 Now I want to insist that the business of truly original study is always 

 suffused and quickened by feeling. What investigator of nature who 

 has ever made a real discovery, however small, does not know that an 

 element of emotion was involved? True discovery is always, it seems, 

 proportional to the imagination put into the effort that led to it; and 

 imagination, even partially fulfilled in actual experience, is emotional 

 through and through. The famous story that Newton was so agitated 

 that he had to ask a friend to write for him when he saw his calcula- 

 tions concerning the attraction of the earth for the moon were finally 

 going to be confirmed by Picard's lately corrected observations on the 

 size of the earth might easily be true, whether it is or not. 



Divorce science from feeling as completely as some men of science 

 seem to believe it ought to be divorced, and science is dead formalism. 

 Real progress in it is at an end. Highly specialized research untouched 

 by imagination is worse than dead, it is a birth that has never been 

 " quickened." In it you have " science for its own sake " sure enough, 

 for it becomes so much a thing of technique, of strange new words, and 

 of old words with twisted meanings, that none but the esoterics can 

 make any sense out of it, much less any practical use. Normal warm- 

 blooded human beings are not greatly attracted to a science 



Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place; 

 Where knowledge, ill begun in cold remark 

 On outward things, with formal inference ends, 

 Or, if the mind turn inward, 'tis perplexed, 

 Lost in a gloom of uninspired research. 



But a practical difficulty, the question of what is possible in one 

 short lifetime, is sure to be raised here. Does this liberal attitude 

 toward nature, this breadth of interest and knowledge, spell its own 

 practical if not its theoretical defeat? Does it make demands upon 

 investigation and upon instruction of the young which can not be met 

 because of the limited capacities of mortal beings? Does it mean 



