I2I2 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



recognition and appreciation of health merits. The school-child never 

 absent for five years is sometimes honoured in the newspapers, as 

 sometimes is the old worker who has been steadily efficient through- 

 out as many decennia; centenarians are recognised, and golden 

 weddings are often jubilees; but we need to go far beyond all such 

 suggestive beginnings. A parentage conscience needs to be aroused 

 and extended throughout the community, and the old-fashioned 

 pride in having a fine family — the oldest ambition in the world — 

 requires to be re-awakened. The distinction between marriage and 

 parentage must be kept in mind, but a definite, yet humane, segre- 

 gation of obvious undesirables seems urgently called for, and is 

 already at various points beginning. 



It is becoming recognised as a too hazardous inactivity in modern 

 times to allow young people to grow up without more definite 

 instruction in the laws of health and happiness. These physio- 

 logical and psychological laws of course include the facts of sex, 

 though these must not be isolated from the problem of the all- 

 round healthfulness of the organism. Never was there more need 

 for biological teaching in schools, including not only much timely 

 and thorough physiology, but a familiarity with such ideas as 

 growing, developing, habit-forming, varying. For we are living in a 

 mechanical age, and our educational world is still too limited by 

 this. If our hereditary buds are to be opened aright, we must secure 

 liberating stimuli, which include first-hand impressions of life. 



In conclusion, the biologist is in the responsible, if fortunate, 

 position of studying a central science. There is great and legitimate 

 field for the mechanics, physics, and chemistry of living creatures, 

 so he must have acquaintance with that. There is also a psychology 

 of many animals and a sociology of a few, so he must appreciate 

 that. And then, central to all these there is the vast and varied field 

 of Biology itself. Hence the biologist has least excuse for partial 

 views, because perforce he must take so many. His aim and purpose, 

 both initial and final, must therefore be — Let is try to take all- 

 round views. 



The dominant inclinations of our times are towards wealth; yet 

 these alone truly reach it who see this as no mere winning of money 

 tokens, but as won through mastery of natural energies, to their 

 economical uses and transformations. The great chemist, Sir William 

 Ramsay, once declared that "real progress consists in learning how 

 better to employ energy — how better to effect its transformation". 

 This is profoundly true, and yet very limited. What is wealth with- 

 out health? No doubt the curse of the poor is their poverty, but 

 biological ideals rise beyond the transformation of physical energy 

 to organic vigour, robust initiative, adaptation to stimulating and 

 enriching surroundings; and these not only their own, but also the 

 community's: Health, for short. 



