CHAPTER II 



THE LAWS OF LIVING PROTOPLASM 



It is expected that the reader will accept the 

 interpretation of the word "law" as defined on 

 page 3 and try not to think of these laws of 

 protoplasm in a legal sense although there is much 

 that is identical. The laws of protoplasm and 

 of jurisprudence are both the product of human 

 thinking, but there is this important distinction: 

 Protoplasmic laws generalize the whole of human 

 knowledge in biology and express what man has 

 discovered about living things; while legal laws 

 represent the attitude of the human mind toward 

 human relations, and this is something which is 

 constantly changing. 



Some will protest that the amount of our in- 

 formation and the youthfulness of our science 

 makes it impossible to state the conclusions of re- 

 search in the form of laws. There is much to be 

 said for this conservative view, but it is the 

 writer's conviction that sufficient is known to per- 

 mit such a statement, particularly in relation to 

 man. The science of biology has progressed to 

 that state where it is able to contribute in a fun- 



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