PREDARWINIAN AND POSTDARWINIAN BIOLOGY 385 



the mental sciences to biology, has been revolutionized. Its students 

 have abandoned the old facultative and associationist schematism and 

 turn with renewed interest to the psychology of emotion, volition and 

 instinct, to animal and child psychology and the normal and patho- 

 logical psychology of the various human races. Mind is no longer 

 looked upon as a thing, but as a living process, the study of which must 

 be undertaken with far subtler methods than were ever dreamed of by 

 the ancient and mediaeval psychologists. Philosophy, ethics and relig- 

 ion, which are all so intimately bound up with psychology, are also at 

 last breaking away from conceptualism and absolutism. This is clearly 

 seen in the works of the pragmatists and humanists, and among theo- 

 logical writings in what has been called modernism. These tendencies 

 of the mental sciences have also reached out into sociology, anthropology, 

 archeology, philology, economics and education. Even the fine arts, 

 though still necessarily addicted to the glorification of certain privi- 

 leged or dramatic moments, have been seized with the modern scientific 

 craving to multiply these moments indefinitely and thus to increase 

 our delight and interest in the full efilorescence of life and its cosmic 

 setting. 



Some may doubt whether these marvelous changes in all modern 

 intellectual endeavor have been brought about by the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion. Of course, even if Darwin had never lived and if the doctrine of 

 evolution had never been revived, it is certain that the biological sciences 

 would have developed considerably during the past fifty years merely by 

 following in the footsteps and by adopting the methods of physics and 

 chemistry, but that Darwin's thought quickened, exaggerated and domi- 

 nated this development cannot be doubted. And even if we go so far 

 as to say that natural selection may eventually prove to be an unim- 

 portant factor in evolution, to be consigned to the limbo of defunct 

 hypotheses, together with Darwin's views on pangenesis, sexual selection 

 and the origin of species from fluctuating variations, we must, I believe, 

 still admit that the great English naturalist opened up before us a vast 

 new world of thought and endeavor. But for the doctrine of evolution 

 we should still be contemplating living organisms from afar and in a 

 more or less scholastic and theologizing spirit, like the biologists of the 

 first half of the nineteenth century, and not as now, at close range and 

 with a deeper and freer insight into the significance of the minutest 

 details of development, structure and function. 



