Place of Definition, etc., in Philosophical Biology 109 



selves between object and name as to prevent assurance 

 that the two should really fit each other; but as nat- 

 uralist he stood firmly for the practise of making both 

 knowing and naming apply very directly to the object. 

 So far he was on the road to the sound position later 

 definitely taken by J. S. Mill as a logician, that common 

 sense is right in calling the word which stands for an 

 object the name of the object, and not merely the name 

 of our idea of the object. 



Biology and logic, as understood in this discussion, 

 have very much in common in that biology can do 

 nothing with the natural objects which are its subject 

 matter except through the instrumentality of a great 

 lot of names ; while logic can do nothing really signifi- 

 cant with names of ideas concerning living beings unless 

 those ideas have their exact counterparts in the objects 

 themselves. 



To be explicit, we shall deal with the description, 

 definition and classification of man; but instead of do- 

 ing this in the usual terminology of the systematist, we 

 shall talk about the meaning of the word "man." 



Imagine a normal child born on an oceanic island, 

 the only animal inhabitants of which are its mother 

 and itself; and imagine further that the mother, an 

 educated woman, has taught her child all sorts of 

 things, except about other human beings or other ani- 

 mals. Not the smallest fragment of information has 

 she imparted to the child about its own kind, other 

 than its mother. What would be the character of the 



