2 THE STORY OF THE LIVING MACHINE. 



een'tly advanced to form a distinct department in 

 '6ur educational system' The reason is not diffi- 

 cult to find. Biology is a new science, not be- 

 cause 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. Ani- 

 mals 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 ani- 

 mals and plants simply as so many museum speci- 

 mens to be arranged on shelves with appropriate 

 names. The modern biologist is studying these 

 same objects as intensely active beings and as 

 parts of an ever-changing history. To the stu- 

 dent 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 phenom- 

 ena of nature, he was able to understand almost 

 nothing. In his inability to comprehend the ac- 

 tivities going on around him he came to regard 

 the forces of nature as manifestations of some 

 supernatural beings. This was eminently natural. 

 He had a direct consciousness of his own power 

 to act, and it was natural for him to assume that 

 the activities going on around him were caused 

 by similar powers on the part of some being like 

 himself, only superior to him. Thus he came to 

 fill the unseen universe with gods controlling the 



