120 The Higher Usefulness of Science 



entiated species to contain some differentia in all the 

 main provinces of their structure and function, that to 

 assume the absence of such differentia in any given 

 case, is unwarranted. 



Although in the interests of practical biology it is 

 desirable that a searching examination of the whole 

 range of biological knowledge should be made from the 

 taxonomist's standpoint, for a short theoretical dis- 

 cussion like that in which we are now engaged all that 

 is incumbent upon us is to look, and that only cur- 

 sorily, into a single province of biology, namely, bio- 

 chemistry. This is all that is necessary, I say, because 

 the analysis of all phenomena of life into chemistry and 

 physics being the ultimate goal of biology according to 

 the now dominant biological philosophy, if it turns out 

 that the chemical analysis is exhaustive only when done 

 on the basis of taxonomy, then it would seem to follow 

 necessarily that all phenomena of structure and func- 

 tion intervening between the grosser morphological 

 features with which taxonomy has for the most part 

 busied itself, and the ultimate physico-chemical fea- 

 tures, must also be brought to a taxonomic basis before 

 they are exhaustive. 



It would be difficult to find a better example of 

 weightiness of inductive evidence as dependent upon 

 cumulation in particular lines, and convergence of dif- 

 ferent lines, than that presented by biochemistry bear- 

 ing on the hypothesis here under consideration. Con- 

 cerning the evidence of the chemical differentiation of 



