THE LIVING ORGANISM 5 



regard for the time those insistent questions as to 

 higher human nature, even though we must inevitably 

 consider them at the last. Indeed, all the human 

 problems must be put aside until we have prepared the 

 way for their study by learning what evolution means, 

 what a living organism is, and how sure is the evidence 

 of organic transformation. When we know what 

 nature is like and what natural processes are, then we 

 may take up the questions of supreme and deep con- 

 cern about our own human lives. 



Human curiosity has ever demanded answers to ques- 

 tions about the world and its make-up. The primi- 

 tive savage was concerned primarily with the everyday 

 work of seeking food and building huts and carrying on 

 warfare, and yet even he found time to classify the 

 objects of his world and to construct some theory about 

 the powers that made them. His attainments may 

 seem crude and childish to-day, but they were the 

 beginnings of classified knowledge, which advanced 

 or stood still as men found more or less time for obser- 

 vation and thought. Freed from the strife of primeval 

 and medieval life, more and more observers and thinkers 

 have enlarged the boundaries and developed the terri- 

 tory of the known. The history of human thought 

 itself demonstrates an evolution which began with the 

 savages' vague interpretation of the ^^what" and the 

 ^^why" of the universe, and culminates in the science 

 of to-day. 



What, now, is a science ? To many people the word 

 denotes something cold and unfeeUng and rigid, or 



