i Animal Life and Ours 347 



and clothing, and for delight. Their evil influence is almost 

 restricted to that of disease germs and poisonous herbs. 



Animals likewise furnish food (perhaps to an unwholesome 

 extent) ; and parts of their bodies are used (sometimes carelessly) 

 in manifold ways. Among those which are domesticated, some, 

 such as canary and parrot, cat and dog, are kept for the pleasure 

 they give to many ; others, such as dog, horse, elephant, and 

 falcon, are used in the chase ; others, notably the dog, assist in 

 shepherding ; horse and ass, reindeer and cattle, camel and 

 elephant, are beasts of burden ; others yield useful products, the 

 milk of cows and goats, the eggs of birds, the silk of silkworms, 

 and the honey of bees. 



Formerly of much greater importance for good and ill as direct 

 rivals, animals have, through man's increasing mastery of life, become 

 less dangerous and more directly useful. Only in primitive con- 

 ditions of life and in thinly-peopled territories is something of the 

 old struggle still experienced. Their influence for ill is now for the 

 most part indirect, on crops and stocks. Parasites are common 

 enough, but rarely fatal. The serpent, however, still bites the 

 heel of progressive man. 



Man's relations with living creatures are so close that systematic 

 knowledge about them is evidently of direct use. Indeed it is in 

 practical lore that both botany and zoology have their primal roots, 

 and from these, now much strengthened, impulses do not cease to 

 give new life to science. 



If increase of food-supply be desirable, biology has something to 

 say about soil and cereals, about fisheries and oyster-culture. The 

 art of agriculture and breeding has been influenced not a little by 

 scientific advice, though much more by unrationalised experience. 

 If wine be wanted, the biologist has something to say about grafting 

 and the Phylloxera^ about mildew and Bacteria. It is enough to 

 point to the succession of discoveries by which Pasteur alone has 

 enriched science and benefited humanity. 



But if we take higher ground and consider as an ideal the health- 

 fulness of men, which is one of the most obvious and useful 

 standards of individual and social conduct, the practical justification 

 of biological science becomes even more apparent. 



Medicine, hygiene, physical education, and good-breeding (or 

 " eugenics ") are the arts which correspond to the science of 

 biology, just as education is applied psychology, as government is 

 applied sociology, and as many industries are applied chemistry and 

 physics. It would be historically untrue to say that the progress in 

 these arts was due to progress in the parallel sciences ; in fact the 

 progressive impulse has often been from art to science. " La 

 pratique a partout devance la theorie," Espinas says, and all 



