10 THE STORY 01 LIFE'S MECHANISM. 



had been comprehended in a scientific system. 

 How, then, can biology be called a new science 

 when it is older than all the others ? 



There must be some reason why this, the 

 oldest of all, has been recently called a new 

 science, and some explanation of the fact that it 

 has only recently advanced to form a distinct 

 department in our educational system. The 

 reason is not difficult to find. Biology is a new 

 science, not because the objects it studies are 

 new, but because it has adopted a new relation 

 to those objects and is studying them from a 

 new standpoint. Animals and plants have been 

 studied long enough, but not as we now study 

 them. Perhaps the new attitude adopted toward 

 living nature may be tersely expressed by saying, 

 that in the past it has been studied as at rest, 

 while to-day it is studied as in motion. The older 

 zoologists and botanists confined themselves 

 largely to the study of animals and plants simply 

 as so many museum specimens to be arranged on 

 shelves with appropriate names. The modern 

 biologist is studying these same objects as in- 

 tensely active beings and as parts of an ever- 

 changing history. To the student of natural 

 history fifty years ago, animals and plants were 

 objects to be classified ; to the biologist of to-day, 

 they are objects to be explained. 



To understand this new attitude, a brief 

 review of the history of the fundamental features 

 of philosophical thought will be necessary. When, 

 long ago, man began to think upon the pheno- 

 mena of nature, he was able to understand almost 

 nothing. In his inability to comprehend the 



