436 ELEMENTS OF BIOLOGY 



focused on the control of the disorders of old age. Moreover, the 

 building up and maintenance of the systems of disease control, of 

 hospitals, of sanitary systems, of food raising and transportation, has 

 brought into governmental and social machinery a tremendous 

 factor that complicates the life of the civilized world. 



It may seem unfair to claim all the accomplishments of Medicine, 

 of Agriculture, and of Bio-chemistry, for Biology. However, by 

 definition Biology is the science of life; by any path of reasoning 

 one comes to the same conclusion, namely, that these accomplish- 

 ments have been attained by the pursuit of knowledge of some 

 characteristic of living organisms. 



The growth of the science of Biology has. not been without effect 

 on philosophy and abstract thought in general. With concentration 

 intensified on the physical and chemical nature of the processes that 

 go on in protoplasm, has come a measure of success in explaining 

 life in terms of natural laws. If, then, life is a manifestation of 

 physical and chemical laws operating in a perfectly definite sub- 

 stance, the supernatural must be dispensed with so far as inter- 

 preting vital phenomena is concerned, must be pushed back and 

 employed to explain the origin of these laws rather than their 

 operation. Thus the successes of Biology have contributed to the 

 growth of the doctrine of mechanism. 



The development of the principle of evolution with its rational 

 interpretation of the history of living organisms has similarly stim- 

 ulated mechanistic philosophy and oflfered a profound insight into 

 the materialistic basis of life as it exists today. Man is thus no longer 

 to be set ofif as a special design of creation; his origins are not dif- 

 ferent in principle from the origins of other animals. Nor is Man 

 the most recent and last effort of the evolutionary process; the 

 human body in its present form is older than that of the modern 

 horse, for example, and except for the brain is less highly specialized 

 than that of several other mammals. The facts of evolution have 

 brought about a sharp break from the belief that Man is the centre 



