54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



That biology has been forced, through its own advances, to recognize 

 the struggle-survival doctrine, upon which she earlier staked so much 

 as the cause of evolution, is really of very subordinate importance in 

 this way, needs to be set forth to the general public far more emphatic- 

 ally and convincingly than it has been. Undoubtedly this strictly bio- 

 logical doctrine has been used to justify much cruel, destructive prac- 

 tise, particularly in the industrial world, and now that biology herself 

 has found the doctrine to be so largely erroneous, it would seem the 

 bounden duty of biology to rectify as far as may be the harm that 

 has been done. 



The conception of " the reign of law " in the organic world ought 

 to be much more widely and concretely established than it is in the 

 public mind. Under stress of the necessity of dethroning notions of 

 supernaturalism from living nature, biologists have up to now been so 

 occupied with explaining phenomena in terms of natural causation that 

 the orderliness of organic phenomena has had to take a back seat both 

 in research and in speculation. 



The well-established truth that apparently all organic beings have 

 in nearl}^, if not quite, all their parts and functions, capacities far be- 

 yond those needed for ordinary life, frequently far beyond what are ever 

 used, except under very unusual circumstances, is of great significance 

 for a general theory of life. But being a comparatively recent dis- 

 covery, and standing in sharp contradiction to the widely prevalent 

 views about the " economy of nature," and the utilitarianism of the 

 Darwinian theory of natural selection, it has as yet found little place 

 in either the learned or the popular theories of life. The general 

 enlightenment needed on this matter might come partly from teachers, 

 secular and religious, partly from psychologists, but most basally from 

 biologists. 



The conception of the organism as a whole that has been forcing 

 itself into biology, particularly from the side of embryology, is destined 

 to have a far-reaching, elevating influence on general beliefs, attitudes 

 and practises. There is no likelihood that the idea will be brought 

 into the full light of day unless biologists are the prime movers in 

 bringing it there. Poets and poetical humanists in all ages have had 

 much to say about " the whole man " ; but the idea appears never to 

 have germinated to the extent of greatly influencing the every-day lives 

 of ordinary mortals. Biologists must be the original culturists here as 

 they have been in so many other realms of things germinal. 



The hypothesis that all phenomena of organic beings, including 

 those pertaining to the very highest aspects of human nature, are cor- 

 related with chemico-physical phenomena, though not yet rigorously 

 demonstrated in most of the subtler psycliic and esthetic provinces, is 

 securely established over so wide a range of life phenomena and has 



