BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1227 



psychobiosis, in short, with psychic evolution as well. Hence, in 

 fact, our main general view of evolution is from Protista and Proto- 

 zoa towards Psychozoa; so from Pro-Anthropos through Homo 

 ignorans to Homo sapiens, and with Homo sapientior as his latent 

 and potential Super-man. So also beyond reptilian and lower or 

 higher individual struggle for existence, and increasingly towards 

 the culture of existence ; and this idealised, even to that of Pamass- 

 oljmipians in Eutopia, or whatever fuller and higher conceptions 

 we may attain. 



That the teaching of the biological sciences as preliminary to 

 medicine still falls far short of its requirements, our own long lives 

 of such teaching endeavours have taught us to realise. Our com- 

 parative anatomy and morphology, classification, palaeontology, and 

 so on, have been more interesting to us as naturalists, than to our 

 medical students; and could we begin again, we should seek to be 

 more physiologically interpretative than ever. They naturally are 

 more interested when we speak of bacteria and germ-theory, or of 

 main physiological processes, self-maintaining and species-con- 

 tinuing in ecology, in development, and in evolution. And with freer 

 conditions, we should give less time to structural comparisons, and 

 more to the functional interpretation of structure: whence to the 

 more physiologically rationalised study of forms and their develop- 

 ment, of ecology and evolution. And all this from (say) Bacteria 

 and Germ-theory onwards to Life-theory, organismal-environ- 

 mental, as from Hippocrates to Pasteur and back again. We should 

 thus be teaching from the advances of biology; yet also in touch 

 with the continual advances of medicine ; and thus better advancing 

 its introductory teaching as well. Beginning, however, with the 

 former, let us take an example or two. To the botanist, it is parti- 

 cularly obvious that the anatomist's customary analysis of the 

 organism, at once into its component organs, is premature and 

 unsatisfactory; since, in its conspicuously dual vegetative and 

 reproductive systems, each has its own functionings, and its organs 

 accordingly; the root, stem, and leaf on the one side, and the 

 essential reproductive and accessory organs on the other. The true 

 first analysis of the plant is plainly into its two distinct Life- 

 Systems primarily; and so it is in animals. But in specialising on 

 the organs of the self-maintaining life, and leaving the consideration 

 of the species-continuing system, with its organs and functions to 

 the last (if not even omitting it altogether, as in Huxley's otherwise 

 excellent Elementary Physiology , so long a standard text-book), 

 and much the like even in many of the later and larger manuals, 

 our whole presentment of biology is thrown out of perspective, 

 and indeed into a wrong one ; which the vast amount of sound and 

 serviceable information on respiratory, circulatory, nutritive, and 

 neuro-cerebral structures and functionings, etc., conceals from 



