ORGANIC DEPENDENCE AND DISEASE 113 



To the thoughtful person who concedes that the physical 

 and the intellectual functions of man can be apprehended 

 only in the light of their historic development and through 

 an understanding of their vast ancestry; who grants that 

 the laws of life are uniform and effect the same governance 

 whether in man or the insect; and who sees that the read- 

 ing of the law is clearest where the tablet on which it is in- 

 scribed is least obscured, in its simplest manifestation 

 rather than in its most complicated effects ; to such as these 

 the data and conclusions here should prove operative argu- 

 ments. To those who have accustomed themselves rather 

 to deductive thinking, who have been wont to conceive that 

 the nature of man is to be construed from subjective and 

 projected conceptions of what ought to be in order to con- 

 form to an introspectional standard; those who have not 

 yet fully learned their subjection to Nature's laws, are en- 

 grossed with the passing interpretations of social prob- 

 lems, with expediences of the statute and the cares of the 

 world; to these should go the assurance that in greater 

 measure than they may have suspected the clue to human 

 destiny and social adjustment lies concealed in the rocks 

 beneath our feet. 



