124< The Higher Usefulness of Science 



results of innumerable researches have been published 

 in biological journals during the last two or three 

 decades, that were not in a strict sense biological. The 

 studies were undertaken not so much to learn the nature 

 of organisms as to test the properties of certain phys- 

 ical and chemical agents in respect to their influence on 

 organisms. Incidentally, one might almost say, they 

 have brought out many suggestive facts about how 

 organisms may behave when placed under unusual and 

 unnatural conditions. But they have not taught us 

 very much about the normal behavior of normal 

 organisms under normal conditions. Indeed, a consid- 

 erable number of biologists have been so bewildered by 

 what they have seen and by their mode of speculating, 

 that they have seriously questioned whether there is 

 such a thing as a normal organism in a normal en- 

 vironment ! 



The sooner it is borne in upon the minds of all stu- 

 dents of living beings, no matter with what aspects of 

 such beings they may be occupied, that they are en- 

 gaged in the great task of describing and classifying 

 the living world ; and, so far as "pure biology" is con- 

 cerned, are doing nothing else, the sooner will objective 

 biology get itself set off from subjective biology and 

 the sooner will philosophical biology become purged of 

 the many morbific growths which now impair its 

 health and mar its beauty. Never more than in this 

 present day when experimental research has gained so 

 wide and lasting, and, on the whole, beneficent a hold in 



