PURPORT OF LIFE 3 



incapable of prolonging the struggle against 

 the influences, whether aggressively hostile or 

 relentlessly dominating, which possess it from 

 within and from without, it must give place, by 

 substitution, to a new combination represented 

 by a new form, which may be an outsider or a 

 scion of the old stock. 



Perhaps it may be said without undue pre- 

 sumption that it is one of the vanities of the 

 imagination to consider that everything exists 

 for his special behoof. This is one of those 

 pious beliefs which are common to men and 

 dogs. One of the elementary truths revealed 

 by biology is this : that whatever use man may 

 make of his contemporaries, and however success- 

 ful he may be in bending them to his will or in 

 exterminating them, the fact remains that they 

 are not here to do his bidding but to find their 

 own sustenance, to secure their own safety, and 

 to propagate their own kind. They have an 

 objective existence guided by instincts of which 

 the superficial reactions alone can be observed 

 and named. Biology is based upon a detached 

 investigation of the properties of living matter, 

 and is thus distinguished from teleology which 

 depends upon an anthropocentric interpretation 

 of the organic environment, whereas mythology 

 may be said to proceed from an anthropomorphic 

 conception of the inorganic environment. 



Anatomy, defined as the science of the structure 



