10 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



pathologists, without a special logical apparatus, will easily 

 go astray in using social phenomena as a guide to the ex- 

 planation of disease. But used with care, the method may 

 have great results. We are not confined to applying it to 

 physiology alone, nor need we seek real analogies in nothing 

 else than the social organism. If we get rid of the artificial 

 barriers between all the sciences, we can use biology to ex- 

 plain pathology and pathology to explain biology, provided 

 nothing assumed contradicts chemical or physical general- 

 izations. Such a process of regression may seem as obscure 

 as it will appear unsound to the over-cautious, but it is 

 possible that those who are weary of the prevalent method 

 of seeking to explain the facts of any science within its 

 own boundaries, such as is seen in bacteriologists without 

 any zeal for colloidal chemistry, will, perhaps, be inclined to 

 welcome any extension of Spencer's suggestion. To choose 

 short illustrations is not easy, and the best I know are 

 supplied in the body of this book. In this place I shall 

 endeavour to use the method more as a means of suggestion 

 than a method of proof, and shall apply it briefly to mitosis, 

 budding, the nature of the cell-nucleus, and to other 

 problems of heredity. 



When dealing so briefly with the inter-relations of the 

 sciences, it is impossible to do more than make suggestions. 

 Yet, even at length, it would not always be easy to show 

 the pathologist that he should recognize what help physio- 

 logy may give him. I have been assured by a very 

 great physiologist that his notion of pathology was that 

 it tended to death, and need not be taken into account. He 

 had not considered the possible value of repair in evolution, 

 in spite of the obvious truth that in all branches of life, 

 thought, and mechanical invention, breakdowns lead to 

 new contrivances. The biologist, too, may refuse, and indeed 



