1912] Ritter: The Marine Biological Station of San Diego — 229 
living, should be more clearly and firmly grasped than it has 
been. That the dictum is solely an expression of the summed-up 
results of technical science and practical experience; that so far 
it has not encountered the crucial ‘‘one exception’’ and hence 
ranks with gravitation as one of the best established of nature’s 
laws; and that its unescapable implication is that the succession 
of living beings in nature was without beginning, that is to say, 
has come from an infinite past, are matters readily susceptible of 
popular presentation and may be counted on greatly to interest 
many people, were the subject to be presented by the biologist 
who himself had fully grasped the problems and clearly seen 
their significance for human life and conduct. 
The generalization, based on an enormous range of observa- 
tions, that all organic beings, including humans, are subject im 
all aspects of their natures, to the principle of evolution, needs 
to be and may be far more widely and firmly implanted in 
popular intelligence than it is; and its bearings on general ideas 
of progress, social and other, and on popular estimates of per- 
fection and imperfection, are very important. 
That biology has been forced through its own advances, to 
recognize that the struggle-survival doctrine, wpon whieh she 
earlier staked so much as the cause of evolution, is really of very 
subordinate importance in this way, needs to be set forth to the 
general public far more emphatically and convincingly than it 
has been. Undoubtedly this strictly biological doctrine has been 
used to justify much cruel, destructive practice particularly in 
the industrial world, and now that biology herself has found the 
doctrine to be so largely erroneous, it would seem the bounden 
duty of biology to rectify as far as may be the harm that has 
been done. 
The conception of ‘‘the reign of law’’® in the organic world 
5 Were I pressed to say which of the ‘‘biological discoveries and general- 
izations’’ here mentioned is uppermost in the interest and effort of the 
present programme of the San Diego Station, I should almost certainly select 
this one of disseminating knowledge concerning the reign of law in the 
organic world. To learn more than we know about the laws that prevail 
in the wealth of life of the great oceans seems to me an object of the greatest 
importance for the general higher welfare of mankind. So slight is our 
knowledge in this domain relative to what future generations will possess, 
that all of us, professional biologists and the generally informed alike, look 
out upon the expanse of the sea with an impression concerning its inhabitants 
