1364 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



came a new arousal, from further recovery of the classic past, 

 Greek, Latin, and Hebrew: in a word, the Renaissance, with its 

 letters, arts, and sciences; and, for the Northern peoples, the m 

 Reformation. With the decline of these two movements came 

 the wider opening of knowledge, as in the Great Encyclopedia of the 

 eighteenth century, and in the corresponding up-clearing [Aufkldr- 

 tmg) of German thought. Then, too, and in its way vastest of all, 

 yet in and from our own island, came the Industrial Revolution, 

 our age of predominant mechanical industry, with its marvellous 

 processes and technical achievements. Yet these were at first but 

 crudely palaeotechnic, with many of the reversions that term is 

 chosen to connote, since back to utmost individualism of the hunt- 

 struggle, and its application to mere gain, and forward to utmost 

 man-huntings called wars; and these still perfecting towards 

 destructiveness, as neotechnic science and skill equip them. So now 

 our outline retrospect is up to date. 



But as yet even those disillusioned of the progress of the paleo- 

 technic order, by its evils, too simply agree with its votaries, still 

 the mass of our modern public, that we need but more charities 

 and more palliatives there, and such and such other improvements, 

 to enjoy health and wealth in peace, and all assured by political 

 progress and power, as up to Hague Court, League of Nations, 

 Kellogg Pact, and even Mr. Wells at his best looking beyond them. 

 With enough of these palliatives, improvements and controls, our 

 industrial age — with progress, of course, in its efficiency and ration- 

 alisation, and also with its present education activated and diffused, 

 in short, its Neotechnic phase — may thus be assured in prosperity 

 and world-peace. 



But here increasingly, we students of life and its sciences can but 

 say — So far, so well — 3^et far from enough! For this modern culmina- 

 tion of the Industrial Age, and with all its progress, is still essentially 

 based upon the mathematico-physical sciences; and so is failing, 

 despite all its clear thinking, its discoveries and inventions, often so 

 helpful to us. For of a civilisation ever more and more dominatingly 

 mechanistic, and thus developed without adequate science or 

 practical ideal of Life in Evolution, who but Death can be its essential 

 master ? 



But to do justice to the industrial age, and the mechanical 

 culture, let us seek it, hear it, at its very best. Where then shall we 

 look for the most expert, the most authoritative and most com- 

 prehensive survey of the industrial age, and throughout its advances, 

 from its early and palseotechnic beginnings to its present neotechnic 

 mastery? Obviously, among all quarters of the world, we may best 

 return to the British Institute of Engineers who have conspicuously 

 led this, even in the main created it, though others, as from the 

 Continent to America, have aided them, and are now often advancing 



