CHAP, in THE APPEAL TO BIOLOGY 3 1 



biology as a help, says the idealist ; but why stop 

 at biology ? 1 



It is perhaps the same position in different words 

 when Mr. Mackenzie tells us that his doctrine of an 

 organism (as applied to the social organism) is a meta- 

 physical category. The perfect realisation of unity 

 in difference, the whole in all the parts, each for all, 

 and all for each, is only hinted in natural organisms, 

 but is achieved in the life of reason and of goodness. 

 Men of science need not trouble to tell idealists of 

 supposed errors in the idealist conception of an 

 organism. Idealist philosophers go to science for 

 hints, for rough outline sketches, for parables ; it is 

 to reason they apply for final and authoritative reve- 

 lations. Few animal organisms may display any 

 perfect relativity of the whole to the parts, and of 

 the parts to the whole. If you cut off my head I die. 

 If you cut off my arm, unless you do it very clumsily, 

 I do not die. The head therefore seems to be a 

 necessary and integral element in the organism ; the 

 arm does not. Or, again, if a lobster loses a claw 

 he can grow another. I, alas ! may lose a leg or an 

 arm, and still survive, but I cannot replace the miss- 

 ing limb. Is the lobster the truer and worthier 

 organism? It cannot do without any one part, and 

 if any part goes amissing, what has been lost is 

 reproduced by the remainder of the organism. Or 

 an organism which, so to speak, was all heads, would 

 seem to be a metaphysically perfect or beau-ideal 

 organism, where every part was vitally necessary, 



1 With an interesting and characteristic modification, Professor 

 Baldwin of Princeton affirms that Psychology gives us the true clue to 

 the nature of society. 



