24 



characters, the moulding influence of habit and of the 

 external environment. The Darwinians see little else 

 than "natural selection" and the "survival of the fittest." 

 The Weismannians see an omnipotent "germ plasma," 

 the creator, mute and unquestionable of all things liv- 

 ing. The morphologists see their own cubist diagrams 

 more clearly than living, growing organisms. The 

 cytologists, breeders, and experimentalists see little 

 more than their own thumb-nail sketches of the minute 

 machinery of life and heredity, of Mendelism, chromo- 

 somes, and eugenics. 







The precise methods of modern biologists give us 

 commendably accurate pictures of some particular 

 point, or phase, of life as it is at the present moment. 

 But they have not clarified man's social problems, nor 

 given us large pictures of the processes and products 

 of evolution. They lack perspective, and cannot take 

 the place of the more comprehensive, descriptive, or 

 historic sciences, such as geology, paleontology, and 

 comparative anatomy, which show us approximately 

 what life is now, as a whole, what it was like in the 

 remote past, the wonderful progress it has made and 

 the order of its accomplishment. 



Thus man's mental attitude towards nature is the 

 product of a complex mosaic vision. The very multi- 

 plicity and changing intensity of the nature-images 

 formed by modern science have created among scien- 

 tists and laymen much mental confusion, augmented 

 by a prevalent belief that certain points of view, and 

 certain methods of studying nature, are more truthful 

 and trustworthy than others. 



It is clear that the historic, microscopic, telescopic 



