PREFACE vii 



While the scope of the book is obviously comprehensive, its 

 treatment is frankly illustrative; so often selecting one topic here 

 and another there, without systematic exhaustiveness, which would 

 have needed a whole series of volumes — themselves but preliminary 

 to the Encyclopaedia Biologica of the future, towards which material 

 abounds, yet much more is needed. 



Our desire has been to give each chapter not only due inter- 

 relation, but also independent unity enough to be read by itself 

 for the time being, according to the reader's main interest. (This 

 has sometimes involved repetition: thus the story of Proteus is 

 naturally discussed under Environments, yet also under Develop- 

 ment; and dimorphism, so extreme in Bonellia, under Sex, and 

 again under Ontogeny. Cross-references are thus reduced.) , 



In our spacing we have given much attention to such questions 

 as the relation between Biology and the other sciences, and to the 

 mapping out of the field of Biology itself. This is because these 

 questions are usually dealt with in a too perfunctory manner, and 

 because we believe that more thoroughness of treatment will be found 

 of real and practical value, not only for the understanding of Biology, 

 but for orientation of the vast fields of scientific knowledge in general. 



In our four fmal chapters we have freely illustrated some of the 

 many bearings of Biology on a large variety of practically important 

 human problems, from Anthropology onwards. For in our discussion 

 of the relations of Biology to Sociology we have shown the promise 

 there is — as for Medicine and Hygiene, for Eugenics, for Education, 

 for Civics, etc. — in turning from too simply mechanistic theories 

 — as of individual survival, and of economic determinism — to those 

 which come closer to actuality in being more frankly "idealistic", 

 as some may call it — yet after all essentially social. 



A little more must be said of the Neo-Vitalism which the 

 general mood and treatment of our book, from its title onwards, 

 endeavours to express. We have illustrated, and emphasised, the 

 indispensable roles of Bio-Chemistry and Bio-Physics; yet we 

 maintain as firmly that those are still but a finer Chemistry and 

 Physics; hence not fully Physiology, as so many call them, but its 

 preliminary and preparatory studies, and increasingly invaluable 

 as such. Biology proper, with Physiology proper, requires those 

 characteristic concepts of its own, which our first chapter empha- 

 sises, and which in our last chapter we further illustrate. Thus the 

 living being enregisters its past, both individual and racial; it 

 exhibits purposive behaviour in its interaction with environment, 

 and with increasing complexity. It grows and multiplies, it develops, 

 it varies, and it evolves, as no mere physical mechanism can do, nor 

 simply chemical process either. While there is a mechanics, chemistry, 

 and physics of the living body, and while these are invaluably 

 progressive alike for thought and in applications, they do not, as a 

 matter of fact, suffice for an adequate description of Lfe as we know 

 it or live it. Organic life is based on mechanism, but transcends it. 



Accordingly we have sought to show — ^with, we hope, pardonable 

 reiteration — the untenability of a Biology which denies that Mind 

 counts. We have alternated throughout, in presenting the organism. 



