TOWARDS A THEORY OF LIFE 1391 



it is for those biological and evolutionary sciences to claim nothing 

 less than central place, even in urban thought and education, and 

 in applications as well. Why so? Because on one side the physical 

 sciences and their applications can but deal with the environment 

 of life, and thus with its underlying conditions and applications; 

 while, on the other side the whole range and heritage of thought 

 of "the humanities", and their entire range of applications to human 

 affairs as well, are no longer to be taken as commonly taught and 

 known, but as offering so many fields of re-investigation, and where 

 need be re-adjustment ; and this in terms of Life, in its history and 

 evolution. Such re-interpretative science of life, human and organic, 

 with its re-sanitating and rejuvenating arts, is thus still but at the 

 outset of its career; yet towards changes greater than most, if not 

 ill, of those of recorded history to which importance has been 

 rightly given; so perhaps not since the rise of neolithic agriculture 

 and its life-advancing labours, in place of the long dominant palaeo- 

 lithic hunters. For recorded history, with its three thousand wars, 

 is fundamentally of so many interactions of this unextinguished 

 and ever-recurrent hunting civilisation, in its many influences and 

 developments, with the rural life. If so, why is this relatively so 

 mute and unhistoric? Memory vividly retains dramatic and tragic 

 evils, but can keep little or no chronicle of the quiet and un- 

 eventful rural life and labour; for which crops, stock, and children 

 have been and remain of essential interest and concern; and even 

 their defence is a secondary and too often far from successful one. 

 But now it begins to be recognised anew that health and funda- 

 mental weal are alike on rural basis, with the need that the town 

 be rejuvenated on rural lines; hence the Rural Renascence cannot 

 but follow. It is even now doing so; though still conspicuously in 

 but few points, as in Denmark and Ireland yesterday, but surely 

 more widely to-morrow. Such a generalisation as that urged by 

 any brief anthropologic retrospect, the usually prehistoric origins 

 of all our cultivated plants, and all our domesticated animals, and 

 with domestication and cultivation of man accordingly, gives con- 

 spicuous evidence of biological and even evolutionary technique in 

 the remote past; and after the long (and largely vitiated) ages of 

 recorded history, we are now beginning to recover this, with ever- 

 increasing advantages accordingly. With eugenics reconciled with 

 euthenics — nature with nurture, good breeding with good rearing 

 and right living — we begin to see again new hope for humanity, 

 towards renewing its individual development and social evolution, 

 and in fruitful interaction. 



Our claim for rural and vital thought and action is thus a very 

 comprehensive one. One to which the mostly urban revolutions — 

 of the historic past and recent present, or threatened future — are, 

 after all, of minor significance; since nothing less than a claim to 



