1242 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



the threefold aspect of Ufe: the organism — function— environment 

 relation. This triangle (fig. 198) — organism, function, environment 

 - — is ever in the biologist's thoughts; it is the prism with which he 

 works, with which he seeks to analyse the light of life, and he must 

 insist on the sociologist dcing the same. For no ideal, no step of 

 progress, no ambition, no difficulty is there that has not these three 

 sides — the organism side, the environment side, the function side. 

 These are the three co-ordinates, to change the metaphor, with 

 reference to which every problem must be orientated, and every 

 ambition defined. Those thinkers and doers who do not recognise 

 the trilogy of organism, function and environment are wrong from 

 the start. 



But of course the biologist would insist that the sociologist must 

 change "organism" into "folk", "environment" into "place" and 

 "function" (or better "functioning") into "work", as Le Play long 

 ago suggested, and as we have already insisted in this book. 

 Every secure advance in social hygiene or on any other line must 

 take account of the three sides of the prism: organism, function, 

 environment; folk, work, place. 



The second suggestion that the biologist would like to make to 

 the sociologist is the need for continually keeping in mind the unity 

 of the organism. The biologist with all his faults is on the whole 

 continuously appreciative of the unity of the organism; but while 

 no sociologist ignores biology or psychology, he often uses arguments 

 and phrases which imply that he is forgetting both. He often talks 

 of man as if he were just a walking gastronomic mechanism, whereas 

 the biologist is coming more and more to feel that the study of the 

 organism is very incomplete unless he recognises a bio-psychology, 

 just as much as a bio-chemistry and a bio-physics. 



In spite of the ingenious Robot-biology of the behaviourists, we 

 hold to the reality of mind — even in everyday animal life. Nothing 

 is more familiar than the encounter between a cat and a blustering 

 dog. The cat has a sudden storm of emotion. What the emotion is 

 we do not know; it certainly is not fear, it is more akin to indignation. 

 From the brain there travels by the sympathetic nervous system a 

 message to the suprarenal bodies, and they increase their secretion 

 of adrenalin. This potent hormone passes into the blood and is 

 carried throughout the body. It raises the blood pressure imme- 

 diately and increases the coagulability, a change that will be useful 

 if there is going to be a wound. It does all sorts of things, including 

 the contraction of the little unstriped muscles that lie at the base of 

 the hairs. Thus the hairs stand on end; the cat looks twice the size 

 it was before; and the dog finds it convenient to remember an 

 engagement in the next street. All this takes place in less than a 

 minute, and we know the details of it very well; but we cannot, to 



