g THE BIOCOSMOS GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



theory. Only when nagged by captious ob- 

 jectors, would he seek reasons for his verbal 

 usage (as may be seen in the above pas- 

 sages) ; which reasons in our opinion do not 

 strengthen his cause. Natural Selection as a 

 term has more truth in it and more virility 

 than Spencer's phrase for the same thing: 

 "the survival of the fittest," though Darwin 

 himself seems to accept the latter as a kind of 

 synonym. It, too, seeks to obliterate the psy- 

 chical side of the process, and thus shows a 

 pallid, rather soulless expression. 



Now, the foregoing trouble in the greatest 

 biological book of the ages (see The Origin of 

 Species, Chapter IV) has continued down to 

 the present, and is by no means yet overcome. 

 That unwelcome psychical intruder shows 

 himself a sort of marplot in the onward march 

 of biology, and cannot be put out. As his pres- 

 ence is always manifested in life from the 

 lowest to the highest forms, our purpose is to 

 acknowledge him, not merely as an alien 

 guest, but as a rightful possessor, in our Bio- 

 cosmus, which must have in every stage and 

 shape the twin elements, the physical or ma- 

 terial and the psychical, both being joined to- 

 gether in an immediate inseparable unity 

 which constitutes the living thing, from the 

 lowest cell to the highest organism. 



Still one cannot help asking about the func- 



