APPENDIX III 



HOW A BIOLOGICAL OUTLOOK ON LIFE AND ITS 

 PROBLEMS CAN BE DEVELOPED BY EDUCATION 



With change of perspective let us now turn to another prac 

 tical question: How the biological outlook on human life may be 

 developed in the course of education. 



By the biological outlook on human life is meant thinking of 

 ourselves as evolved and evolving organisms, struggling and 

 co-operating, multiplying and developing in an evolved and evolving 

 environment. Evolving may be, of course, in a minus as well as in 

 a plus direction, or even between the two. 



The biological outlook implies a full recognition of the fact that 

 the social co-ordinates: folk, work, place, and also in reverse 

 order, place, work, folk, correspond to the biological co-ordinates: 



ORGANISMS, FUNCTIONINGS, ENVIRONMENTS: or, again, ENVIRON- 

 MENTS, FUNCTIONINGS, ORGANISMS. 



It is plain enough that the biological outlook cannot be rapidly 

 acquired, for it is the outcome not of direct instruction, but of a 

 sympathetic attitude to life and an intellectual discipline in its ways. 

 It implies a mental habit, the result of successful observation, 

 experience and reflection, which leave the inquirer impressed with 

 the value of looking at human life in the light of biological principles. 

 Not that this discloses all the facts, for it requires to be comple- 

 mented by Psychology, Sociology, Ethics, and even Religion. 



Except in the mentall}^ resolute, a vivid biological outlook is 

 rarely gained apart from some tradition. In most cases the student 

 comes to look at life biologically, because his teachers, parents, and 

 associates look at life in that way. 



The meaning of the biological outlook may be clearer if we con- 

 trast it with the non-biological way of looking at human life — ^not 

 that any one can be entirely non-biological. The biological outlook 

 implies a recognition of man as a living organism, the highest of 

 the mammals, with all the vital processes of other animals, with 

 harmonious functioning that spells health, with liabilities to dis- 

 harmony that lead to disease, and with a very important regulative 

 system whose hormones are essential to the welfare of body and 

 mind. The psychical aspect is as supreme as the protoplasmic is 

 fimdamental, but while the body may be thrilled by the mind, it 

 is not less true that the mind is thirled to the body. The unity of 

 the organism is a basal biological truth. 



Secondly, the human organism lives in an environment which 



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