FACTORS IN CONSTRUCTIVE ACTION 23 



changing, composite caricature, which exaggerates her 

 most conspicuous features, her most dramatic, and most 

 recently discovered phases. 



But yesterday, nature seemed to be the unchanging 

 product of a precipitative creative fiat; today, the still 

 changing product of endless growth. Tomorrow, what 

 will the image be? Which science will then throw the 

 high lights of nature on the mind of man? Which one 

 then will cast the shadows? 



The great naturalists of the preceding generation 

 those brilliant students of the interwoven lives which 

 play their various parts on shifting scenes of forests, 

 field, and shore gave us our first vivid picture of an 

 ever changing nature. It was largely their testimony 

 that won the verdict for evolution. After the great 

 naturalists came the modern biologists, aiming to ex- 

 plore the source of life, and in the seclusion of the labor- 

 atory seeking to obtain a nearer and a better view of 

 nature in accouchement; now scrutinizing with micro- 

 scope and blazing lights the minutely woven fabric of 

 egg, and sperm, and embryo; now, watching the first 

 throbs of nascent life in cell and organ; now, by artful 

 and instantaneous killing, striving in their order to 

 fix the mincing steps of life for more deliberate inspec- 

 tion; now striving to view the steps of life in action; 

 and again, by mimicking the different processes of life, 

 hoping to catch their meaning, or perhaps the meaning 

 of life itself. 



The field naturalists and the modern biologists 

 survey a particular phase of life through a particular 

 mental facet, and each school has evolved a more or less 

 rigid formula for the things it most clearly sees. The 

 Lamarckians chiefly see the inheritance of acquired 



