446 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



their surroundings and are acted on by them. Taking the first letters 

 of the three biological co-ordinates— organism, function, and 

 environment— we suggest as a descriptive definition of living: 

 0->-f->e; E->f->o. In condensed formulation living is an ever- 

 changing ratio between O, f, e and E, f, o, or O, f, e/E, f, o, the 

 numerator aspect being prominent at one time, the denominator 

 aspect at another. This is obviously no definition of "life", since the 

 words organism and function imply the whole mystery; yet it is a 

 very useful positivistic conception; and it may save us from the 

 fallacy, still frequently illustrated, of trying to define organism 

 apart from environment, which is absurd. Whatever be the 

 true inwardness of Ufe, the facts that we study are: 0->-f-^e; 

 E->f->o; 0-^f-^e, and so on in succession. 



(3) It is always useful to get below superficial differences to 

 fundamental resemblances. Thus it was a notable step when Huxley 

 united birds and reptiles as Sauropsida, and a still greater when 

 Claude Bernard justified Linne's term Organisata, by showing in 

 detail the phenomena common to the life of plants and animals. 

 On the other hand, there is danger in satisfying our desire for unity, 

 or for continuity, by sticking the same label on things or processes 

 which remain very different. Thus, as we have shown in another 

 section, the word "evolution" is used as a label for a variety of 

 genetic processes which have not very much in common save that 

 they are all modes of becoming. 



There is a tendency to do the same with the word "life" or 

 "organism". It is generally admitted that Herbert Spencer did more 

 harm than good with his term "social organism", and Whitehead 

 has made something of the like exaggeration, in the opposite direc- 

 tion, in his emphasis on the organism-hke character of the atom. 

 So our third proposition is that, when all is said, the orders of fact 

 indicated for short by the terms "matter", "life", and "mind" 

 remain very different from one another. Perhaps it would be clearer, 

 in spite of the pedantic words, to say that "cosmosphere", "bio- 

 sphere", and "sociosphere" are three different worlds, one within 

 the other, each with its own distinctive concepts, categories, or 

 descriptive formulae. No one stands for continuity more firmly than 

 General Smuts, yet he insists that "matter", "life", and "mind" 

 are to be regarded as three quite distinct orders of fact. This does 

 not mean that they are separated by hard-and-fast boundaries, for 

 it is certain that organisms are whirlpools of matter and energy; 

 that the members of a human society are rational mammals; that 

 mind is clearly emergent in many an animal. If anything is gained, 

 something is lost by si)eaking, as some distinguished thinkers do, 

 of "the life of crystals", or "the organism of the atom", or "the 

 fellowship of molecules", or "the society of cells" in the body. 

 Organism, for example, is a clear-cut, well-established term; and it 



