210 The Unity of the Organism 



of animal biology — attitude toward research problems and 

 undertakings, valuations and interest in different fields of 

 knowledge, educational aims and method — all are affected. 



In the light, for instance, of such a complex of animal 

 behavior as that presented b}^ the northern fur seal, its 

 mating, breeding, migrating and other habits, the conten- 

 tion that the myriads of complicated phenomena which go 

 to make up animal life can be understood by converting 

 zoology into a laboratory and experimental science, to the 

 end of analyzing the phenomena into their "simple elemen- 

 tary components," is so ludicrous as hardly to need argu- 

 mentative refutation. Indeed, it seems as though persons 

 obsessed by a theory to the extent of being impervious to 

 the ludicrousness of the contention, are likely to be also 

 impervious to the true reasoning involved in it. It may, I 

 think, be assumed that so much of zoology as has formed 

 this remarkable conception of itself will before long drop 

 into the background by scientific gravitation despite its 

 present great vogue. 



One of the leading motives, consequently, of this con- 

 structive part of my entei'prise is to establish the essen- 

 tiality of general zoology and its time-sanctioned depart- 

 ments on so solid a basis of philosophic reasoning that the 

 necessary methodology of the regenerated science of the 

 future will be clearly seen in broad outline. 



If the considerations inadequately presented in these last 

 pages and in other parts of this volume once get secure 

 lodgment in biological thought it will become manifest that 

 the "behavior" of any animal species (as of the fur seal, 

 to take at random any one of thousands of species that 

 would illustrate the point quite as well) can mean nothing 

 less to a really scientific biology than the whole series of 

 activities of at least one individual animal from its birth to 

 its natural death. Consequently an "understanding of the 

 complicated phenomena" thus presented can not be secured 



