1438 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



physical and biological knowledge underlying social. After studying 

 so many systems of philosophy, each more or less deterministic or 

 libertarian, which have grown and flowered and faded, the student 

 may often despair of clear solution; yet here in real life it is clearing 

 up before us. And if so, why not set about clearing it up more fully ? 

 The abstract philosophers have been too much but tilting in the 

 ancient quarrel of the gold or silver shield, which was neither, yet 

 both ; since silvered on one side, gilded on the other. 



On the whole, however, our interpretation of Holland may seem 

 so far deterministic; for each sea-dyke becomes a new determinant, 

 impeding further reclamation from the sea. Yet who can say that 

 Holland may not be extended yet further? Soundings and other 

 surveys may show further extension possible on sand-banks, yet 

 impracticable in the deeps between : so that limitation of extension, 

 and freedom for extension, are each relative so far, though the 

 Ocean ultimately determines the limit. Yet this being so, the Dutch 

 long ago conquered that, as seafarers, to foremost proportional 

 record among all nations, and even with a period of veritable national 

 dominance. Yet even this was limited by others in turn; so it may 

 still appear that Holland is but a limited little country and people 

 after aU. But what of their culture-achievements — as from agri- 

 culture to crafts and arts; from boat and shipbuilding to their 

 world-masters of painting, like Rembrandt, Hals, and Rubens — or 

 from learning to literature, with Erasmus and more; and from 

 custom to world- justice with Grotius. And so too in science; in fact 

 in many respects showing potentialities, and expressions of these, 

 which go far to justify high expectations for Holland and hopes for 

 humanity, as more than the Hague Court is there to show. And 

 when this is true of one small people, what of others? What, too, 

 of the greater ones — and in their incipient efforts towards harmony ? 



We see that however determinism may limit life on physical 

 or even organic levels, the psychological and social life may be 

 thereby all the more pressed on to higher freedom of effort beyond. 

 But do not even achievements again become limits? Undeniably, 

 yet never absolute ones. 



Thus, instead of a simple acceptance of either determinist or 

 libertarian conclusions, we see in their perpetual alternation, on 

 heightening levels, a main factor of true progress, though granting 

 that progress may at times be arrested — or even too easily go the 

 wrong way. But even here the Dutch national dyke-vigilance 

 comes in, as exemplary principle; the spirit thus controlling the 

 environmental life-adjustment, even when and where it cannot at 

 the time transcend it. 



Through history we might trace this contrast of determinism and 

 freedom; and indeed as one of its ever-recurrent ideas; in fact, 

 throughout the varied children of men. Among these the philo- 



