230 Kansas Academy of Science. 



These race habits, or instincts and reflexes, are known to func- 

 tion as body-building and body-using activities long before the 

 conscious powers of the embryo are awakened; but this does not 

 imply that instincts precede consciousness in evolution. Life may 

 repeat the major, conscious, body-building experiences of the an- 

 cestors of the embryo in an instinctive way in producing body- 

 structures, and then quicken the conscious powers of the individual 

 at birth to meet the varying conditions of the environment and to 

 seek better ways of living; but there could have been no instincts 

 and reflexes at first, unless they were received from Jehovah. All 

 work must have been pioneer work, and therefore work done con- 

 sciously, if life came unequipped with earth-conquering habits 

 from the hands of its creator. 



If we desire the formality of a course of reasoning before we 

 are willing to accept life with its many possibilities, we should re- 

 member that we gain truth in two distinct, though related, ways. 

 The evidence of our five senses, if confirmed by many repetitions, 

 is usually regarded as affording a satisfactory basis for action in 

 those things that can appeal to the senses. But there is a very 

 large field open to human investigation that lies beyond the world 

 of sense, though contiguous to it. Here any theory that enables 

 one to explain things is pragmatically true. In chemistry and 

 physics, for example, the atom, the molecule, and energy and ether 

 are concepts not derived from sensations, yet the chemist and 

 physicist base their systems of chemical and physical theory on the 

 actuality of these non-sensuous entities. The uncounted millions 

 invested in manufacturing enterprises^are so invested because the 

 entire business world believes in the truthfulness of the theories 

 embodied in chemistry and physics. These, in turn, are held by 

 all scientists to be true because of their pragmatic value, though 

 the atom, molecule, energy and ether cannot be grasped by their 

 senses. 



The biologist, in a similar way, accepts life as the basic entity 

 in the world of organisms, though his senses take in no direct in- 

 formation concerning life and its essential qualities. By experi- 

 ence and observation he knows what it is to be alive, and he has 

 learned that in some way, not revealed by his five senses, life con- 

 trols matter through energy, whenever it is associated with these 

 entities in living organisms. How energy influences matter, and 

 how life influences energy, neither the biologist nor the physicist 

 at present knows, but the fact of such control is patent to all ob- 

 servers. 



