230 University of California Publications in Zoology (Vou. 9 
ought to be much more widely and coneretely established than it 
is in the puble mind. Under stress of the necessity of dethron- 
ing notions of supernaturalism from living nature, biologists 
have up to now been so occupied with explaining phenomena in 
terms of natural causation that the orderliness of organic 
phenomena has had to take a back seat both in research and in 
speculation. 
The well-established truth that apparently all organic beings 
have in nearly if not quite all their parts and funetions capacities 
far beyond those needed for ordinary life, frequently far beyond 
what are ever used excepting under very unusual circumstances, 
is of great significance for a general theory of life. But being 
so comparatively recent a discovery, and standing in sharp con- 
“ 
tradiction to the widely prevalent views about the ‘‘economy of 
nature,’’ and to the utilitarianism of the Darwinian theory of 
natural selection, it has as yet found little place in either the 
learned or the popular theories of life. The general enlighten- 
ment needed on this matter might come partly from teachers, 
secular and religious, partly from psychologists, but most basally 
from biologists. 
The conception of ‘‘the organism as a whole’’ that has been 
forcing itself into biology, particularly from the side of em- 
bryology, is destined to have a far-reaching, elevating influence 
on general beliefs, attitudes and practices. There is no likeli- 
hood that the idea will be brought into the full light of day in 
any other way than at the hands of biologists. Poets and poetical 
humanists in all ages have had much to say about ‘‘the whole 
man,’’ but the idea appears never to have germinated to the 
extent of greatly influencing the every-day lives of ordinary 
mortals. Biologists must be the original culturists here as they 
have been in so many other realms of things germinal. 
(so far as we think of these at all) that is very vague and therefore mean- 
ingless and uninteresting. We conceive this vast wealth of life en masse as 
one may say; that is, our knowledge and thoughts about it are undifferen- 
tiated and chaotic. We take for granted in a hazy kind of fashion that some 
sort of order prevails. Such knowledge has little power for good, either 
practical or theoretical. Knowledge as to what this order is must be 
explicit before it can be very significant and interesting. It is just this 
sort of definite information that the San Diego Station is striving after. 
