CHAPTER VII 

 THE LAW OF THE MEMBERS 



ANOTHER Biologist, Prof. E. W. MacBride, speaking of internal 

 secretions (Presidential Address, Sect. D., Brit. Association, 1916) 

 shows himself to be fascinated by the Pauline idea that " if one 

 member suffers, all the rest of the members suffer with it." Yet 

 the full biological implication of this observation is little realised, 

 as little indeed as is the fact of the existence of a genuine 

 biological community, held together by work and partnership, 

 the legitimacy of the ensuing capital depending upon bio-moral 

 factors, i.e., upon the serviceability of. organic wealth to fellow- 

 organisms ("members" in the biological sense). 



The neglect of the " Sociology " of inter-relations is all the 

 more astonishing as evidently Biologists could not help noticing 

 that often the relations between organs (" semi-independent 

 organisms " !) partake of the sociological order. One reason 

 for this neglect is that sociological and economic study is not 

 particularly congenial to Biologists ; another that the prevailing 

 fashion in biology favours purely mechanical interpretations. 



Prof. MacBride's way of treating the " law of members " is 

 a case in point. Instead of examining the application of this 

 law in connection with the correlated activity of the glands, he 

 shelves the whole matter, getting rid of the difficulty by invoking 

 one of the most abused of biological catchwords, namely, the 

 " environment " a veritable deus ex machind of Biology. This 

 term, if it is not to be entirely discarded, should, in my opinion, 

 at least be clearly defined, so as to be used with the least possible 

 indeterminateness. Not enough, however, with an undefined 

 entity of " environment," Prof. MacBride conceives of the 

 organism as possessed of a kind of internalised entity in the shape 

 of an " inner environment " (an inner " outer ") which he employs. 

 inter alia to supplant a rival entity, namely, the Aristotelian 

 " entelechy " revived by Driesch. Instead of admitting that 

 organisms capitalise the results of joint work in the shape of 



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