CLASSIFICATION OF SCIENCES 119 



approach their ideal completeness in proportion 

 as they are correlated. 



In the third place, we have to bear in mind 

 that the living creature is passing by as one of a 

 great historical pageant. It is an heir of the ages, 

 only to be understood as the resultant of num- 

 berless factors mechanical, chemical, physical, 

 and animate which have gone to its shaping. 

 It has gathered into itself the sunshine and haar, 

 the wind and the rain of millennia. It requires 

 a unity of the sciences if it is to be understood. 

 Nor is it merely a passer-by in a great procession, 

 which we can study all too briefly before the 

 torch it carries goes out and it fades away, it is 

 an individualized phase in the ceaseless circula- 

 tion of matter and energy. To change the meta- 

 phor again, it is a whirlpool in the river of time. 

 All of which makes us feel that the sciences are 

 most scientific when they are most united. The 

 higher the subject in the scale of being the more 

 obvious this is, for Man most of all, but even in 

 regard to the non-living the inter-relatedness of 

 things makes a unification of sciences necessary. 

 Who, for instance, can understand the earth as 

 it is apart from its living tenants? The very 

 dust throbs with life. 



The idea which we wish to illustrate is very 

 plain when we think of some big problem such 

 as the physiology of marine organisms and the 



