72 Some Relationships of Economic Biology 



generation of the nineteenth century, philosophical enquiry into animal- 

 structure and plant-structure enabled "natural history" to co-ordinate 

 knowledge and "economic study" to apply it with an assurance hitherto 

 impossible. The technical study of function on the nutritive side had 

 taught medicine that health and disease are opposite faces of one shield, 

 and had satisfied husbandry that plant-growth is more than a me- 

 chanical process. Pathological technique now told the physician how to 

 diagnose; chemical technique felt justified in teaching the farmer how 

 to till. Such techniques received academic recognition and were raised 

 to the status of studies comparable in importance with "natural history," 

 which now underwent fission into branches restricted respectively to 

 animals and vegetables. But while in both cases the study of organic 

 structure could now be linked with the earlier interest in the characters 

 and virtues of hving things, neither branch of "natural history" under- 

 took the philosophical study of organic function. 



The philosophical study of reproduction had not yet set in; the 

 technical study of this subject, which played so important a part in 

 the early history of mankind, had degenerated into a traditional em- 

 piricism. The technical study of nutritive function was shunned by 

 both branches of "natural history" for two rather different reasons. 

 The study of animal nutrition was the prescriptive right of medicine; 

 the study of plant nutrition from the standpoint of the substratum was 

 so ardently pursued by chemistry that the part played by the plant 

 itself hardly interested husbandry. 



The academic incorporation of techniques older than their correlated 

 philosophical studies afforded evidence of a deeper change. The seven- 

 teenth century interest in the improvement of natural knowledge had 

 been narrowed in the eighteenth through the delegation to technical 

 study of the duty of applying such knowledge. The eighteenth century 

 interest in the promotion of natural knowledge had been further narrowed 

 in the nineteenth by the exaggeration of the distaste for "encyclo- 

 paedism" into an aversion towards systematic work. Academic interest 

 was concentrated upon the philosophical increase of natural knowledge 

 and its apphcation in doctrine. These two activities were now amal- 

 gamated in the comprehensive term "natural science." 



Every old technique has been the product of some correlated art, 

 at whose service the activities of the technique were placed. The co- 

 ordination and apphcation of the knowledge gained were duties apper- 

 taining to the art concerned. Yet every sound technique eventually 

 reaches a stage when it seeks new knowledge on its own initiative. The 



