508 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE IN THE CENTURY. 



it, prompting it to vary, eliminating it, is obvious. 

 (2) To this environment, however, the organism re- 

 acts, modifying it, utilising it, and in some measure, 

 perhaps, mastering it. In other words, function 

 consists of action and reaction between the organism 

 and the environment. (3) But in the third place, 

 the organism is in genetic continuity with its ances- 

 try, it is the expression of an inheritance, it has kin 

 and it produces more. All biological interpretations 

 must take account of the three facts: — environment, 

 function, and kinship. 



As biology came of age, its modes of interpreta- 

 tion were bound to have their influence on other 

 studies; and this influence on sociology has been far 

 more important than the idea of '^ a social organism." 

 A method is better than a metaphor. 



(I.) To interpret a social form we have to take ae- 

 count of locality, climate, fauna, and flora, and so on, 

 in a word, Lieu; (II.) of the mode of life, the occu- 

 pations, the doing and not-doing, in a word, Travail; 

 and (III.) of natural inheritance and the facts of 

 kinship, in a word, Famille. 



(I.) Environment. — Although precise facts as to 

 the influence of the environment on the organism 

 are now more abundant for plants and animals than 

 for man, it was apparently in reference to man that 

 the idea first took hold. The theory that man was 

 moulded by his surroundings is much older than 

 Buffon and Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck and Trevi- 

 ranus who insisted, in various ways, on the environ- 

 mental factor. But just as exact biological facts of 

 environmental influence were scarce before the work 

 of men like Semper, though interpretations in terms 

 of supposed environmental influence were rife, so it 

 must be confessed that most of the human illustra- 



