BIOLOGICAL LABORATORIES 231 



But is the oneness of the world with its demonstrably underlying 

 few substances and forces, whether these be held to be material or 

 spiritual, more real than the diversity of it ? Surely it is not so far as 

 the every-day lives of every-day people are concerned. And ,the view 

 that science is common sense refined and systematized withstands all 

 objection. The fisherman's Albacore endures whatever test of reality 

 may be applied to the biologist's sea urchin eggs or anything contained 

 in them. It is impossible to define any given specimen of living sub- 

 stance so as to ascribe to it ultimateness without ascribing ultimateness 

 to the living animal itself to which the specimen pertains if the same 

 rules of defining be adhered to throughout. But if every part of the 

 living world is as real and as ultimate as any other part, it is futile to 

 expect to fully understand some portions of it by knowing other portions 

 of it. The theory that any amount of understanding, even complete 

 understanding, of a flower or a sea urchin would give complete under- 

 standing of man, to say nothing of God, is contrary to the fundamental 

 nature of things and of knowledge. Nor, speaking chemico-physically, 

 can any amount of understanding of the substances of which an organism 

 is composed give complete understanding of the organism itself. 



Vastly contributory to the understanding of organic beings as are 

 chemico-physical investigations upon them, indeed impossible though it 

 is to gain exhaustive knowledge of them in any aspect of their lives 

 without such investigations, every truly vital chemico-physical problem 

 of organisms is two phased: how do the chemico-physical attributes of 

 the constituent substances act upon and so explain the organisms; and 

 what particular structures and activities are the chemical substances 

 caused to manifest by being constituents of and used by the particular 

 organisms ? 



And so it is revealed that the familiar dictum "all life is one" 

 must not be understood to mean that living nature has only one life; 

 but rather that there is some thing in common among all the myriad 

 things that live, namely, the half dozen, less or more, chemical simples 

 now known to compose a living being. The diversities of living nature 

 are, consequently, as "ultimate problems" as are its uniformities; and 

 the biological institution which should set for its goal final solution of 

 the. problems of the organic world would be vast and complex and costly 

 beyond any thing yet created or likely to be. 



The administrative body of a research foundation in biology which 

 should so understand biology would always have before it this compound 

 question: what particular subject or group of related subjects at this 

 particular time, in this particular locality, and under existing limita- 

 tions of resources would best be investigated ? 



The Scripps Institution conceives its purposes in this way, at least 

 while its present director stands as spokesman of its purposes. Just 



