THE EVOLUTION OF SERVICE 405 



progress in his manner of living, by following the same laws other 

 living things have followed in their progress; or must he create out of 

 his own compelling needs new methods of living, new principles, new 

 laws of conduct, that are solely applicable to himself? 



To these questions science has given various answers, for life, as 

 well as nature, has many sides, and science sees them through diverse 

 eyes. 



II. The Mosaic Vision of Science 



Nature is, indeed, so vast, so intricate, that one science can see but 

 a very small part of her; and since no science can long preserve its 

 images undimmed, nor adequately utilize the vision of other sciences, 

 our mental picture of nature is a mosaic patchwork of flickering images ; 

 a changing, composite caricature, that exaggerates her most conspicuous 

 features, her most discussed and most recently discovered phases. 



But yesterday, nature seemed to be the essentially unchanging prod- 

 uct of a precipitative creative fiat; to-day, the still changing product 

 of a slow process of growth; and to-morrow, what will the image be? 

 ^'hich science will throw the high lights of nature on the mind of man? 

 Which one will cast the shadows ? 



The great naturalists of the preceding generation — those brilliant 

 students of interwoven lives playing their varied parts on shifting 

 scenes of forest, field, and shore — gave us our first vivid picture of an 

 ever-changing nature. It was largely their testimony, and the over- 

 whelming evidence gathered from their point of view, that won the 

 verdict for evolution. After the great naturalists came the modern 

 schools of biologists, exploring the streams of life to their source, and 

 by greater refinements of methods seeking in the seclusion of the labora- 

 tory to obtain a nearer and a larger view of nature in accouchement: 

 now scrutinizing with microscope and blazing lights the minutely woven 

 fabric of egg, and sperm, and embryo; now seeking the first throbs of 

 nascent life in cell and organ; now, by artful and instantaneous killing, 

 striving to fix in their order the mincing steps of life, and to preserve 

 them for more deliberate inspection; now striving to view the steps of 

 life in action; and again, by mimicking the processes of life, hoping to 

 catch their meaning, or perhaps the meaning of life itself. 



The field naturalists and the modern schools of biologists survey a 

 particular phase of life through a particular medium, or facet, and each 

 school has evolved a set formula, or diagram, for the one thing it most 

 clearly sees; notably the Lamarckians, who see the inheritance of ac- 

 quired characters, and the moulding influence of habit and of the 

 external environment ; the Darwinians, who see little else than " natural 

 selection" and the "survival of the fittest"; the Weismannians, who 

 specialize in an omnipotent, but obedient, "germ plasma," and who 

 insistently deny the inheritance of acquired characters; the morphol- 



