1362 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



hereby give notice to our elders, pastors and masters that we for our 

 part undertake to study more faithfully than ever in such subjects as 

 they teach us, on the clear understanding that they, for their part, 

 make it clear to us what each given subject signifies in terms of Nature 

 or of Civilisation. 



A surprising report, heretofore without parallel in educational 

 history; yet hardly less surprising is it to the reader when he finds 

 in a concluding passage, the student spoken of as She! Oho! — he 

 may well say — this is Eve out for the apple again! And when at 

 foot of this long report, he finds only a line or two to the effect 

 that — We for the men students of the University entirely adopt 

 the above report (signed President and Secretary) — the reader can 

 but admire how rapidly Adam follows her example as of old I 



Now had this Report been elaborated by students of an old- 

 world University, we cannot think it would have been more than 

 acknowledged and pigeon-holed. But the surprising fact is that this 

 university — no less than Columbia, with its twenty-odd thousand 

 students and eleven hundred teachers — replied with promise and 

 speedy performance: whereby a course on Civilisation, and from 

 Pre-history to the After-war, has since been provided, and this in 

 small tutorial groups, with daily lecture and discussion, thus 

 mobilising no small proportion of the numerous teaching staff; and 

 similarly a comprehensive course outlining the rise and progress, the 

 main methods and results, of the sciences of Nature. Other American 

 Universities have rapidly followed suit, and with increasing encour- 

 agement; and similar endeavours are being made on this side too. 



Now the essential interest of this great change — this step beyond 

 the extremes of routine curricula on one side, and mere individual 

 options on the other, and yet towards order in principle and freedom 

 in detail — is that here is not only a synthetic curriculum, as some 

 have tried before, but the right one — that turning upon the essential 

 concept of Social Life, for which Nature is ever conditioning civilisa- 

 tion; yet Civilisation is ever mastering and re-determining Nature. 

 Each given Place substantially determines the work and life of its 

 people ; yet these People are increasingly re-determining their place. 

 And this formula of social life is exactly parallel to — since socially 

 evolved from — that of all forms of organic life, in which Environ- 

 ment so far controls and determines the life of the organism, and 

 yet the Organism in the measure of its powers reacts successfully 

 upon its environment, and even modifying it. In briefest formula- 

 tion, the synthetic parallel is clear — using initials for Nature and 

 Civilisation, Place and Folk, Organism and Environment. 



N -^ C : C -> N 

 p _^ F : F -> P 

 E -> O : O -^ E 



