1912.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 139 



appreciated at once by our Academy, has immensely enlarged the 

 scope and interest of the study, making it plain that all living species, 

 including man himself, have originated one from another; so that 

 all are but genetically consanguineous parts of one great whole, and 

 the study of one part is, therefore, more distinctly and surely a guide 

 to the complete understanding of the other so related, and thereby 

 more or less similar, parts. From a full consideration of this rela- 

 tionship may be deduced the strongest possible incentive to morality 

 and the clearest guide to its correct principles. 



We may perceive that natural history studies teach us that what 

 is aimed at is not the benefit and survival of each and every indi- 

 vidual, but the perpetuation and progress of the race, through the 

 success of its most vigorous, ablest, fittest, members. For, in fact, 

 not only are species derived from one another, so as to be but parts 

 of one whole; but a race is yet more closely a unit, the somewhat 

 varied outgrowth of a single progenitor, as the leaves and limbs of a 

 tree grow out from one stem; though, in some cases, detached, to be 

 sure, like the rooted limbs of a banyan tree separated from the 

 perhaps perished parent trunk, or the rooted runners of a strawberry- 

 plant, or of a walking-fern, or of any layered plant. The propaga- 

 tion by artificial grafting of a bud, or scion, on a kindred stock is 

 closely parallel, with some variation in character from the new stock. 

 The perpetuation by a seed, a specialized portion of the tree, with 

 the whole character of the tree concentrated in small compass, as 

 fully as in a bud or scion, and naturally detachable and capable of 

 growing in a favorable soil and temperature, is plainly no less an 

 outgrowth, a growing forward, of the parent tree, than is the growth 

 of a rooted limb, or runner, or a grafted bud or scion. In the case 

 of animals, the simplest forms, like the amoeba, merely divide in 

 halves, and each half grows forward, with equal claim to be the 

 identical parent stock; but, in more complex organisms, minute 

 specialized portions only of two parents, with the character of these 

 parents concentrated therein (as a plant's is in its seed), unite and 

 grow, when favorably situated, partaking of both characters, 

 as a scion grafted on a rooted stock is doubly affected. The 

 race, then, is the perpetuated individual, and all parts of the race 

 are, in some sort, one, identical, with its progenitor; and as all races 

 and species have been derived from one another, the oneness, or 

 identity, extends to all living beings. 



Surely, this identity is the highest incentive, as well as the best 

 guide, to morality. In the first place, it is seen that the true object 

 of morality is the benefit of the race, rather than of the individual; 

 though, of course, the individuals partake of the benefit. This view 

 makes the individual willing to die, if need be, for the true benefit 

 of his race. The appropriate instinct established by natural selec- 

 tion makes the mother, whethe%human or brute, fight with the utmost 

 courage or most ingenious cunning for the preservation of her young, ' 

 as, indeed, for her own perpetuation, for the life of what has been a 

 part of her own body, and is still no less a part of her, notwithstanding 

 its being detached. 



