46 The Higher Usefulness of Science 



biology knows him, no less than as theology and philos- 

 ophy know him, is a moral being. Notice I do not say 

 he is necessarily a good being. What I mean is that 

 he is a being who consciously estimates his reciprocal' 

 acts with his fellow's as good or bad and by this is 

 moral. But since nature produces and sustains man, 

 it must be so constituted that it can produce and sus- 

 tain moral beings. I am judging nature in strict 

 accordance with the laws of natural production, as 

 observational knowledge finds them. An essential ele- 

 ment in the law of organic genesis is that the germ 

 plus its environment is sufficient to account for the 

 completed organism. And this law is but a special 

 case of the general law that everything found in an 

 effect is implicit in its causes. This commonplace is 

 brought forward to use as a stepping stone to what is 

 not a commonplace: Examining nature broadly as we 

 have tried to, we are able to see something of what 

 there is in her constitution that enables her to produce 

 moral beings. It is exactly that fundamental origina- 

 tive and sustentative interdependence among the parts, 

 that basal integratedness of nature upon which we have 

 discoursed, that endows her with this sort of creative 

 power. 



To summarize : Scrutiny of the human species in the 

 manner that descriptive biology scrutinizes any and 

 all species, discovers this species to have certain attri- 

 butes that are very exceptional considering the ani- 

 mate world as a whole desire for companionship, 



