TOWARDS A THEORY OF LIFE 1401 



our environment, Biology has been incorporating much of what it 

 can learn of these, since Hippocrates, and earlier. Again, the 

 humanistic studies inquire throughout the human past and its 

 evolutionary heritages, seeking to continue these, and critically to 

 distinguish good from evil. Ethical, psychological, and esthetic 

 studies and applications similarly justify their part in this division 

 of labour so far, yet only effectively as they keep touch with life, 

 in which they arose, and ever need to return. In this wide sense, 

 as we verify and realise the concept of Life in Evolution, all systems 

 of philosophy have alike to be reconsidered, as studies directed, 

 instinctively when not consciously, towards its general review and 

 interpretation; in fact, as so many contributions towards what we 

 must thus call — Biosophy. 



To justify this whole argument, we now see the need — and why 

 not possibility—of a Life-Theory; and this evolutionary throughout, 

 from organisms at simplest to humanity at highest. In this due 

 place must be found for each and all the contributory sciences, for 

 the occupations and the arts, and for literatures and philosophies 

 as well. Without, of course, pretending to discuss all this with any 

 completeness— a task for the indefinite future — we have by this 

 time the conditions for outlining the Life-process, both organic and 

 social; and these broadly enough to indicate space for all we know 

 of its varied Life-developments. 



B. LIFE THEORY IN OUTLINE AND NOTATION 



Beyond the all-too-often isolated, and thus static, conceptions of 

 Environment and Organism, we have here to consider their actual 

 and active linkage in life — indeed as Life. And this in its twofold 

 aspect: since the Environment is so far determinist of the organism, 

 yet the Organism reacts upon its environment, so far dominating it, 

 or at least modifying it in turn. We have thus on each side of this 

 life process a triple unity, a chord of life : so let us sum these into 

 briefest possible notation, Environment functioning on organism as 

 Efo, and Organism functioning on environment as Ofe, (Indeed, as 

 we speak of nerves as afferent and efferent, might it not be clearer 

 were we similarly here to speak of aff unction and eff unction?) To 

 abate use of technical terms, and simplify to the utmost, let us begin, 

 as so often throughout the history of biology, with what we know of 

 our own human life, and at its simplest; for which none will deny 

 that the general conception, of the Environment functioning on the 

 organism, is far more simply and concretely realised in human 

 observation and experience; as how each given Place (sa}^ on land 

 or by sea) essentially determines the main work of its folk (Pwf ) ; yet 

 also how these Folk actively work to make the most of their place 

 (Fwp). For in the first of these two life-chords, the natural conditions. 



