PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 505 



easier, and that their solution carries the solution of end results 

 with them. 



This is only a fraction of the truth. The beginning of life is 

 apparently simpler than the end because fewer questions are asked. 

 The later structures have not at that time arisen and do not then call 

 for explanation. But no formula for Alpha will serve for Omega. 

 Every phase and stage of life brings its own problems; each one has 

 its own creative power. The biologist must consider each of these 

 problems as they arise, individually and organically ; both as inde- 

 pendent units and as dependent members of a genetic series, or 

 organic whole. For each phase of life is created by that which pre- 

 cedes, and is the creator of that which follows. For this reason, 

 while every science is tributary to every other science, each one is 

 the rightful arbiter in its own field. The sociologist, who now leans 

 too heavily on the biologist, is as likely to be led astray as those who 

 formerly learned too heavily on the theologian. The true sociologist^ 

 like the morphologist, is master in his own field, and in things socio- 

 logical it is his business to teach the biologist and the theologian. For 

 he alone is best able to estimate the creative value of the cooperative 

 innovations upon which each stage of social progress stands, just 

 as the morphologist can best estimate the creative value and direc- 

 tive influence of perforate gill clefts, and the four-chambered heart, 

 or a particular mode of dentition, without reference to germ-plasma 

 and chromosomes, and without waiting for the students of heredity 

 to decide for him whether acquired characters are inherited, or not. 

 The morphologist knows that the tongue, the hand, the brain, the 

 skeleton, and the yolk of the egg have a directive and creative value 

 that is wholly their own product, a value which can never be meas- 

 ured in terms of chromosomes, or in terms of any other remote 

 antecedent conditions, any more than the properties of water, or 

 protoplasm, or consciousness, can be measured, or be profitably dis- 

 cussed, in terms of chemical elements. Each part and organ, at each 

 stage of its progress, must be measured in terms of its own existing 

 properties, not in those of its constituents, nor in those of remote 

 antecedent conditions. 



