1392 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY ,,«„ 



subordinate all the reddened banners of international and civn^ 

 wars alike, by the green; that of our rural and evolutionary thought 

 and action, leading towards vital re-education, and reconstructive 

 Peace. 



This main difference cannot be too clearly defined. Briefly 

 stated, it is that the urban thought of science and its applications 

 is essentially in terms of physical sciences and their related crafts 

 and arts; so that even hygienic endeavour is but recent, and still 

 far too little realised; while the physician is but consulted in need, 

 without understanding of his biological point of view; and such 

 evolutionary thought as there is tends to be perverted, in terms of 

 competition, if not even war. Though thinking rustic minds are 

 still far fewer than those of the urban occupations and their appro- 

 priate sciences, and their thought utilises all it can of these, their 

 essential interest turns towards life organic, psychic, and social, and 

 to the tending and enhancement of these. Hence then the need so 

 often urged in this book, of this vital outlook, and its critical and 

 constructive application, through the whole urban culture, both 

 general and academic, reconciling both its mechanistic and its 

 humanistic studies and activities by absorbing and re-stating them 

 all in terms of its essential concept of Life in Evolution. Undoubtedl}^ 

 a large demand, and which we can but leave for fuller exposition 

 in our sociological papers; yet one which we would fain stir our 

 biologically-minded readers to share, and state in their own way. 



BIOLOGICAL INTERESTS AS ARISING FROM SOCIAL. 



— How comes it that our parallelised outline of biological and 

 social surveys shows them so fundamentally akin ? Anatomy and 

 Physiology were human, long before they became comparative; 

 and the ethnographic classification of human races (Shem, Ham, 

 and Japheth) long antedates animal and plant classifications. 

 The idea of Palaeontology arose from archaeology, after this had 

 been pushed to "giants' bones" and "pilgrims' shells". Embry- 

 ology arose from the questions arising before human birth, and 

 Evolution largely from eighteenth-century "progress"; and so 

 on. So in many or all respects it has been natural, simple, and 

 profitable for man to begin his biology with man, as did the 

 naturalistic physicians; and human economics, and even politics, 

 generated Ecology too. For its playful founders, the old fabulists, 

 knew kings before they told them tales of the king of beasts 

 and his difficulties among and with his subjects; and Solomon 

 too was king before he counselled to "go to the ant" , or discoursed 

 of the plant world from the hyssop to the cedar. Most of all is this 

 order of treatment convenient for that general Theory of Life 

 which it is now full time to outline: since "Place, Work, and 

 People" are obviously far earlier and simpler conceptions, for race 



