THE CHARACTERISTICS OF LIVING CREATURES 



The All-Round View 







WE may take an animal to pieces as the anatomist is 

 always doing, and a wonderful analysis it is, especially 

 when we place other lenses in front of our own; we 

 may inquire into the "go" of the various parts as the physiolog- 

 ist seeks to do, and we have seen what an intricate engine the 

 body is; we may watch the almost transparent egg of a moth 

 gradually divide and redivide and develop into a tiny caterpillar 

 which even more marvellously becomes a butterfly the em- 

 bryologist's task; and we may work among fossils till we are 

 able to throw upon the present the light of a distant past which 

 is the palaeontologist's ambition. These methods are all essential 

 if we are to begin to understand living creatures, but they are 

 not altogether adequate. We must also have an all-round or 

 synoptic view of living creatures ; we must see life whole. What 

 would we think of an astronomer who kept to his spectroscope 

 and never enjoyed the splendour of the star-strewn sky? And 

 it is even more important for the biologist than for the astronomer 

 to have the synoptic view, because life is such an elusive kind of 

 activity. We cannot hope to get to grips with it unless we 

 approach it in every possible way. So, laying aside analysis, let 

 us consider the characteristics of living creatures when we look 

 at them in an all-round impressionist way. In so doing, we shall 

 follow, with the permission of the publishers (Messrs. Williams 

 & Norgate), J. Arthur Thomson's System of Animate Nature 

 (vol. i, 1920, pp. 50-56). 



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