42 The Higher Usefulness of Science 



vidual has its own particular protoplasm. Similarly 

 the notion was formerly prevalent that germ cells of 

 animals are practically alike. But closer scrutiny has 

 revealed the fallacy of this idea. We now know that 

 the germs of different organisms are in their funda- 

 mentals as different from one another as are the full- 

 grown organisms ; and we view the egg from which an 

 individual animal grows as that individual in the one- 

 celled stage of its life. Do you not perceive something 

 of the important difference of viewpoint here ? If from 

 the simplest and earliest stage of its existence, each in- 

 dividual is to some extent different from every other, it 

 is so far self-responsible for its own future development 

 and activity. Growing at the expense of the few inor- 

 ganic substances which are the common bounty of all liv- 

 ing beings, it and it alone must have the ability to trans- 

 form the common substances into its own special sub- 

 stances. Each organism is indeed a chemico-physical 

 machine, if one chooses so to call it, but it is a par- 

 ticular machine in deepest meaning a self for it has 

 an essential part in its own making and in the preser- 

 vation of its own identity. The .supreme significance 

 of modern biology to philosophy is the establishment 

 of both the inviolability of the individual and the in- 

 terdependencies within and among individuals as never 

 before have these truths been established. 



(6) Another set of facts which science has only 

 recently brought home to us is the universality in the 

 human species, however low in culture racially or 



