1422 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



Next for the origin of Science, of course understood as no mere 

 Roman empiric knowledge, or modern information, but the Hving 

 Hellenic, neo-HeUenic, or even super-Hellenic logos. Its rise and 

 development is again no insoluble mystery. Imagine ourselves now 

 two neighbouring peasants, say on the Nile, whose inundation 

 buries our separating boundary stone out of sight under its mud, 

 or even undercuts it till it is lost in the stream. When ploughing- 

 time comes, we each incline to think our space a furrow or two 

 broader than it reaUy is. Whence encroachment, and quarrel. Our 

 wives, however, have more sense; they run to the Temple, and 

 bring down its Measurer-priest, who comes with his record-book 

 and his ropes (for geometry, in hieroglyphic character, is rope- 

 stretching). He measures anew from a higher fixed point, and puts 

 in a new stone, with his blessing on us while we respect it, his curse 

 if we remove it: and so the matter is practically and peacefully 

 settled. So much for land-surveying; a useful art, but not yet 

 science. But by and by one of these bright Greeks comes along: he 

 sees that one does not need a plough to make or conceive a straight 

 line ; nor earth to make a rectangle, nor yet a boundary stone if we 

 wish to distinguish a point clearly. Thenceforward we have 

 geometry as a science, developing in Greece, till Plato can put his 

 matriculation condition over his Academic gate: "Let no man 

 ignorant of Geometry enter here." The like of course for every 

 science, as from nature study and herbal, to empiric anatomy and 

 medicine, to Biology proper. The like from fire-kindling to Physics, 

 from rolling tree-trunk to Mechanics, and so on; always the same 

 step from empiric experience to vivid rationality. Mathematics 

 readily rationalises to notations, applicable to concrete scientific 

 problems, as from astronomy and mechanics onwards, towards the 

 incipient and coming graphic presentment of all fields of science — 

 the Bio-social last, and yet far from being excepted; as from our 

 own simple attempts here, to the elaborations of "Biometrika". 



But the mind is not satisfied with the sciences alone, even though 

 marshalled from mathematical to social, and with their main inter- 

 relations, as outlined in the "end-papers" in the binding of this 

 book. It demands more, even to pro-synthesis of each and all kinds 

 of knowledge. It seeks to appreciate their fullest significance, their 

 "values" to the spirit. These are also emotional, as the very name of 

 Philo-sophy expresses. Such Pro-synthesis as may be, humanly 

 emotioned — so varying with the range and field, the life-experience, 

 the temperament, as weU as with the powers of the thinker— is not 

 that Philosophy? 



So here on the intellectual level, we have mathematics, science 

 and philosophy, which make up the essential range of intellect at 

 highest. Yet the philosopher, to whom the consent of each and 

 every age has given the highest place, had his beginnings in life- 



