6o ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



for both are in their degree true. There is an inter- 

 relation which cannot be disentangled, for it is based 

 on the fundamental uniformity and unity of the 

 cosmos. What is important is that the human 

 idea of value finds its external counterpart in an 

 actual historical direction in phenomena, and that each 

 becomes more important because of the relationship. .* 



Much of what I have written will appear obvious. 

 But if it has been obvious, it will be because I have 

 here attempted to focus attention on some of the 

 corollaries of a single fundamental truth — so obvious 

 that it often escapes notice, but so fundamental that 

 its results cannot but fail to obtrude themselves 

 upon us. I mean the unity of phenomena — not 

 merely the unity of life, put on a firm footing for 

 all time by Darwin, though that is for my purpose 

 the most important, but the unity of living and 

 non-living, demanding a monistic conception of the 

 universe. For the present, the stellar hosts (possibly, 

 as recent astronomy seems to assert, assembled not in 

 one system but in a multiplicity of universes, floating 

 through space like a shoal of jelly-fishes in a Mediter- 

 ranean bay) — the stars seem alien from our life, alien 

 or at best neutral. All that links us to them is that 

 we are built of the same stuff, the same elements. 



But the last half-century has at least enlarged 

 our view so that we can perceive that we, as living 

 things, are not alien to the rest of life — that we 

 march in the same direction, and that our hostility 



