SECTION 27 APPLICATION. 383 



capacity by the spirometer, the speed by the stop-watch or the 

 film, and the relations subsisting between these diverse factors 

 have also been studied. Yoked to the "scientific management" 

 movement, these experiments may confer incalculable economic 

 benefits on the community. In addition to this, psychological 

 and physiological examinations of individuals, more particularly 

 on the side of nervous and sensory conditions, and of types 

 of mental association, have already been instrumental in fitting 

 square men into square holes and round men into round holes. 



In short, he who examines a phenomenon from every possible 

 theoretical point of view, will be best able, if trained, to recog- 

 nise also its value for the furtherance of the practical uplift 

 and organisation of mankind. Just as we are bound to protest 

 against haphazard enquiries, against petty or too extensive in- 

 vestigations, and against unsystematic procedure or only attend- 

 ing to observation, generalisation, or deduction; so it is our 

 office as methodologists to plead that it is unmethodological, now 

 that science and the life of practice are so highly developed, 

 to neglect drawing practical conclusions in the proper place 

 and in due course. 



Needless to state, he who is engaged in an enquiry of a quasi- 

 practical nature ought likewise to do his best to augment as 

 far as possible the sphere of quasi-theoretic truth. 



204. The following quotation relating to the practical 

 aspect of biology well illustrates the interdependence of the 

 theoretical and the practical life : 



"Our knowledge of animals, like the child's, obviously arises with their 

 chase; and that of the aspects and properties of plants, wholesome and 

 poisonous, perhaps even medicinal, with the hungry search for roots and 

 berries. The evolution through higher social states finds its reflection in 

 . widening zoological and botanical folklore, and the developed agricultural 

 conditions of civilised life not only admit of the increasing and syste- 

 matising of our knowledge, but even at length contribute valuable con- 

 ceptions, like that of selective breeding, of which Darwin has made such 

 especial use. The recent contributions of biology to the arts of life have 

 been of course primarily associated with the advance of medical treatment; 

 hence the popular and even medical conception of the botanist is still based 

 upon the traditional one of the herboriser in quest of specific remedies. 

 The increase of food-supply, through pisciculture and breeding, and through 

 the destruction of the enemies of useful species, is an application of more 

 recent but widening growth ; in fact those applications of our knowledge 

 of cryptogamic pests which have especially culminated in the labours of 

 Lister and Pasteur, at present furnish the stock illustration of the applica- 

 bilities of pure biology. New ideas are also germinating; thus specula- 

 tion is busy, e.g., with schemes of artificial human selection; while rapid 

 progress is being made in the transition from detailed medicine to whole- 

 sale hygiene i.e., beyond the mere application of specific remedies to 

 morbid individual variations, and towards a progressive and harmonious 

 re-organisation of the functions and environments which are afforded by 

 the human hive or city to its individuals . . . 



"In tracing the progress of biology, we are simply following the reflec- 

 tion of the changing lights cast upon the organic world by each prevailing 

 mode of general thought and social life. In a word, the evolution of biology 

 forms part of the general social evolution; the science is no completed 



