FOREWORD vii 



units are massed together in ordered harmony, Nature has 

 accomplished this miracle. What was more natural, then, 

 than that an author endowed with a vast share of intel- 

 lectual curiosity and gifted with the diagnostic acumen of 

 the born physician should seek for a solution of his diffi- 

 culties in the workshops of men of science ? He went to 

 them at first as a student of sociology in search of facts 

 which would help him to understand the laws which should 

 regulate the conduct of human beings living under the 

 ever-changing conditions of our modern civilization. But in 

 time it began to dawn upon him, as he watched the labours 

 of the men who are striving to unveil the mysteries of living 

 matter — physiologists, pathologists, psychologists, em- 

 bryologists, bacteriologists, biochemists, anthropologists, 

 zoologists, and botanists — that the student of sociology 

 had at least as much to give as to receive. He found that 

 the problems which face the students of that most marvel- 

 lous of living organized communities — the healthy human 

 body — the problems of disease and of health, of malignancy, 

 immunity, inhibition, heredity, cell division, evolution, 

 growth, repair and old age — had their parallels and analogues 

 in organized human societies. He therefore commenced 

 to ascertain how far the obscure phenomena of biology 

 could be elucidated by applying the explanations which are 

 familiar to students of social phenomena. Thus it comes 

 about that in these essays we have records of a unique 

 kind— records made by a layman after years of hard think- 

 ing and close observation which he now places before his 

 professional brethren with a skilled pen, a rare wealth of 

 apt simile, using always the diffident and modest language 



