1474 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



day the progressive behaviour of a starfish in learning to right itself 

 when turned upside down, to keep the hermit-crab's diary for him, 

 to discover the succession of populations in a jar of pond water, 

 to make a careful record of the differences between the members 

 of a large family, say of chickens, and so on as opportunities arise 

 — that is the line best of all worth following. Our proposition is : the 

 biological outlook arises more from the study of the living than from 

 the well-established and admittedly indispensable analytic studies 

 which need no defence. 



Everyone who has tried knows that the study of living animals 

 is peculiarly difficult; and many creatures have an exasperating 

 way of dying just when we particularly wish them to be alive. For 

 a large class the study of living animals above microscopic dimen- 

 sions may seem almost Utopian, Yet it can be done; and it is well 

 worth while. 



It must not be supposed for a moment that we are proposing all 

 this as a substitute for dissection and other analytic methods, which 

 have their own values and rewards. We are simply pleading for a 

 fairer trial of a fundamental discipline, as rewarding as it is obvious. 



Nor let anyone suppose that the study of a life-history, or of an 

 animal's everyday behaviour, or of its relations with its environ- 

 ment, animate and inanimate, need fail to be brain-stretching. 

 Resolutely pursued, the study of the living animal will prove a 

 sound discipline for the scientific mood. It often implies some 

 education in ingenuity, too; for it is rarely easy to study living 

 creatures intimately, yet without doing them any hurt. 



Our plea may be received more sympathetically when it is 

 remembered that in India, so large and clamant a part of the 

 Empire, there is a widespread repulsion to our predominantly 

 necrological methods; and our own students often feel the same, 

 women specially, and poets too. Now when the taking of life is 

 abhorrent, and the handling of the dead animal is repugnant, 

 surely, in the name of education, the natural and promiseful way 

 out is to get the teachers in Indian Universities, Colleges, and 

 Schools to think out a carefully-planned study of living animals, such 

 that it will illustrate biological principles, and engender the bio- 

 logical way of looking at life. Moreover, it is common sense that the 

 result of instruction depends in part on the degree in which those 

 concerned teach and learn gladly. That the glad way of teaching 

 and learning biological science in India is through the study of the 

 living organism, we are convinced; and more of this will do us good 

 nearer home. 



Here, then, let our volumes end as they began; and as their chapters and 

 sections have been conceived and treated throughout; in short, with the Science 

 of Life, as Living. 



VIVENDO DISCIMUS. 



