1304 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



and on biological conditions — ^by pecuniary considerations as not 

 only fundamental but supreme, and so founding upon market 

 experience the so-called "immutable laws of political economy", as 

 of absolute world-authority accordingly, instead of understanding 

 them as but the numerical record of the resultants of all succeeding 

 phenomenal changes, both physically and biologically social, as 

 well as social proper. Ruskin failed to convince the economist of the 

 truth of his criticism of their limiting the conception of value to 

 money prices alone — ^viz. that a loaf of bread of given quality and 

 weight has a fixed value, quite independent of its changing money 

 price in the market, that of maintaining an average worker for so 

 many hours. He was talking sound physics and physiology in one, 

 in fact anticipating the physico-physiological conception of "cal- 

 ories", though that word was not yet coined. Stanley Jevons how- 

 ever, as a pioneering modernist economist, and dealing with coal — 

 a more interesting subject to many than bread, yet undeniably 

 connected with it — awoke his fellows to some understanding of 

 such physical economics. Yet ordinary teaching and text-books still 

 show too little influence from this ; so fortunately one of our f ormeost 

 physicists. Prof. Soddy, has lately set about convincing them anew. 

 Yet even if he triumph, and schools of economics progress into 

 elementary physics as he asks, the biologist still needs to give his 

 social contribution. The physician, as sanitarian and hygienist, has 

 been still longer in the field, and with increasing practical results, to 

 show Ruskin's seeming "sentimental" dictum — "there is no wealth 

 but life". The eugenist biologist now fully maintains and extends 

 this, as fundamental to social life and science. He proves that good 

 breeding is fundamental to the very maintenance of civilisation ; yet 

 sometimes forgets that the supreme aims of civilisation are needed to 

 establish and maintain it aright. 



The correlation of these four main sciences, and of their six re- 

 spectively fundamental sub-sciences is thus broadly clear: the dia- 

 gram may suggest further developments ; of which some are in active 

 progress, and others still needed. 



ESSENTIALS OF SOCIOLOGY.— The essentials of sociology, how- 

 ever, need clear outline statement, though but briefly here. Essential 

 then, and characteristic of the social science proper, is the study of 

 human and social groupings, in all their forms, aspects, and doings 

 throughout time and space ; and thus of archaeology and history, of 

 ethnography and ecology (economics at its fullest and widest), and 

 thence towards the better understanding of the course and character 

 of social evolution. Here, however, the biologist may say — indeed, 

 often has said — ^\\^ell and good, if this be all, it is but an extension 

 of my province, for man is undeniably in it. For if wonderfully 

 social animals like bees and ants, like beavers and more, are not 



