PROGRESS, BIOLOGICAL AND OTHER 43 



of biological method is apparent. What we ask, and 

 rightly ask, is whether in the laws of biological prog- 

 ress we can find any principle which we can apply 

 directly to guide us in devising methods for human 

 progress. 



I do not propose to follow the example of many 

 rather hasty philosophers and biologists, who have 

 thought that, whenever the study of lower organisms 

 permitted the promulgation of a biological law, such 

 law can be lifted bodily from its context and be ap- 

 plied without modification to human affairs. Man 

 is an organism — but a very exceptional and peculiar 

 organism. Any biological law which epitomizes only 

 facts about the lower creatures is not a general bio- 

 logical law, for general biological laws must take ac- 

 count not only of plants and animals, but of man as 

 well. In practice, however, the simplest method is 

 to frame our biological laws without considering 

 man, and then to see in what way they must be 

 modified if they are to be applied to him. 



Man differs biologically from other organisms in 

 the following main ways. First, he has the power 

 of thinking in concepts; in other words, his power of 

 learning by experience is not always conditioned di- 

 rectly by the accidents of his own life, as is the case 

 with animals endowed only with associative memory, 

 but he can, by reaching the general from the special, 

 attain to the possibility of dealing with many more, 

 and more complicated, eventualities. Next, by 



