1 FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS $ 



concept of matter; and this concept, based as it is on 

 mere empirical experience, on inadequate knowledge and 

 covered with a thick over-burden of unsifted tradition, 

 may be mostly wrong, however deeply embedded in human 

 thought it may be. A reform of the concept of matter 

 is urgently required, and is indeed amply justified by 

 the unprecedented recent advances in physical science, 

 and especially in our knowledge of the constitution 

 of matter. And a reform will, as I shall show in the 

 third chapter, bring matter considerably nearer to the 

 concept of life. 



With regard again to the concept of life, what is most 

 urgently required is that it should be rid of that haziness, 

 indefiniteness, and vagueness which makes it practically 

 worthless for all exact scientific purposes. Biological 

 science has not in recent years made the same gigantic 

 strides forward in the knowledge of fundamentals that 

 physical science has taken, and yet for Biology too the sky 

 has considerably cleared, and what two or three decades ago 

 was still hotly disputed is to-day generally accepted. Be- 

 sides, the greatest development in Biology during this cen- 

 tury has taken place in the science of Genetics, and the trend 

 there has been steadily away from the hard mechanical 

 conceptions which dominated Biology more than a genera- 

 tion ago. The time here too may be ripe for a reconsidera- 

 tion of some of the fundamental concepts and standpoints. I 

 may express the hope that the masters of this science will not 

 concentrate all their attention on special researches, how- 

 ever promising the clues at present followed may be; but 

 that they will find time for a reconsideration of the wider 

 conceptions which, ever since the great time of Darwin, 

 have been getting further out of gear. Unless Biology can 

 succeed in clarifying her fundamental conceptions there is 

 risk of great confusion in a science in which old general 

 ideas have persisted in spite of great progress in detailed 

 knowledge. If in the sequel I join in the discussion of the 

 foundations of Biology, not as entitled of right to speak but 

 more in the character of an outside spectator urging the 



