1228 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



writers, teachers, and students alike. Weismann was here on the 

 right track — though at the deeper levels of analysis, cellular and 

 protoplasmic — in his germ-plasm theory, with its important conse- 

 quences: and for a like appreciation of the supreme importance 

 for good or ill of reproductive urges and functionings, even for 

 the self-maintaining life itself, we have the immense Freudian 

 movement; yet this essentially from the psychological side, 

 and that approached from the pathological expression — albeit 

 increasingly getting beyond this, and even to the interpretation 

 of the sublimation of reproductive and sex impulses towards 

 individuality at its highest, as in poetic and other developments 

 of genius. 



Yet with due appreciation of all this, we cannot but also claim 

 consideration for our own line of approach and treatment of these 

 subjects here — as from the general survey of normal plant, animal, 

 and human types in their dual life, and thus very definitely in their 

 evolution of reproduction and sex; to which the self-sustaining life, 

 despite its ecologic interest and economic importance, is in every 

 species sooner or later subordinated — yet also individualised by 

 this, as a plant by its flower; and to the corresponding developments 

 in animal and human normality, towards beauty and perfection; 

 and this in form, in functioning, and in psychic life accordingly; in 

 short, through its ascending evolution of the sexes. Hence as brief 

 example of this treatment, the preceding outline indications and 

 illustrative examples of the process of floral evolution in the natural 

 orders of plants ; which might next have been traced in many lines 

 of animal life, and similarly in humanity. 



Thus in the descending analysis of the organic individual, even 

 the classic "temperaments" of Hippocrates — ^still plainly continued 

 in those fuller studies of "constitution" and "diathesis" which in 

 medicine ever bulk so largely — must yet be developed beyond their 

 usually too simple treatment, cLs mainly characteristic of the self- 

 maintaining life, and more fully interpreted by help of the repro- 

 ductive life also; as again so notably in progress, from the psycho- 

 logic side, by the Freudian schools. In summary, then, we press for 

 the ever fuller consideration (and by the psychologist as far as 

 possible along with the physiologist), of the evolutionary importance 

 of the oscillating balance of these two main elements of life's 

 activity, the self-maintaining and the species-continuing. 



For their mutual modifications, and their differing co-adjust- 

 ments — and these each by turns with biopsy choses and psycho- 

 bioses, of progressive or degenerative results — are surely significant 

 — and does it not seem often determinative — -of the process of 

 evolution in the origin of varieties, species, and more. If so, this 

 view deserves more consideration than it has yet obtained. 



