1298 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



irresponsibility, of economic and social "individualism" in its yet 

 worse sense, can be readily acquired. And so on downwards, in 

 symmetric parallelism, to fuller and fuller ob-individualities of 

 social treason, of which the degenerate Caesars are far from being 

 the latest representatives. So while this graph is plainly adaptable to 

 scientific developments in both directions, it also needs but a little 

 imagination to see in it, at its ascending best, the ladder of Jacob's 

 dream, with its psychologic and other expressions at various further 

 levels. So next we may draw out the one below; and not only to 

 the elaborations of Freudian and other pathological studies, but to 

 criminological ones. We may even compare these levels with the 

 circles of the Dantean Inferno; for though that masterpiece, of 

 social survey and of individuality-interpretation, is still far from 

 being adequately overtaken by science, surely here we are on a way 

 towards appreciating its main outline. 



Psycho-Biological Concepts and Mytho-Poesy. — In kindred 

 ways to the preceding, as we set down other outline-presentments of 

 life's aspects as they appear, of life's processes as they develop, we 

 find them also closely recalling concepts transmitted from long past 

 phases and types of civilisation, and their distinctive cultures. 

 Their classic literatures are appreciated accordingly by scholars and 

 poets, by philosophic or religious minds, but hitherto, so far are we 

 aware, not recognised as coming into the fields of evolutionary 

 biology and psychology at all, or still less as again evolving out of 

 these. Yet just as the above graphic outline was simply devised to 

 trace the steps of Individuality-Development, as associated with 

 sex and family; yet, after such uses, it is seen also to recall mytho- 

 poetic traditions; as we often see in other cases. Thus the discussion 

 and notation of the Phases of Life, as manifested in the seasonal 

 growth of plants, in the development of animal life, and next in the 

 life-story of our own species — after years of use in these simple 

 naturalistic ways — is suddenly seen to recall the Olympian Gods; 

 and with freshening additions to the traditional interpretations, 

 which scholars have so long been discussing in their own different 

 traditional ways. Again, take our simple concept of Life (O, F, E) 

 in terms of organism in interaction with its environment, and of 

 human life in similar terms, as of interaction of people and place, 

 with correspondingly simple psychology also. As its graphic outline 

 develops, this soon leads us onwards to a simpler and clearer present- 

 ment than usual of the deeper fields of psychology — religious, 

 philosophic, poetic, etc., which thus find simple and suggestive 

 evolutionary explanation. But later appears the quite unexpected 

 result, that these modes of active life, at its highest, answer exactly 

 to those so long ago expressed in terms of the Nine Muses ; while, on 

 the other hand, those of misadjustment fall into the old categories 



