54 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
cell, it is capable of being formed from or converted into various of 
these other forms of energy, the law of conservation of energy being 
obeyed in the process just as it would be if an exchange were taking 
place between any two or more of the inorganic forms ’ (p. 128). The 
most characteristic feature of biotic energy, distinguishing it from all 
other forms, is the power which it confers upon the specialised trans- 
former to proliferate. 
Conclusion. 
In ‘ The Salvaging of Civilisation,’ H. G. Wells has lately directed 
the attention of thoughtful people to the imperative need of reconstruct- 
ing our outlook on life. Convinced that the state-motive which, 
throughout history, has intensified the self-motive must be replaced by 
a world-motive if the whole fabric of civilisation is not to crumble in 
ruins, he endeavours to substitute for a League of Nations the con- 
ception of a World State. In the judgment of many quite benevolent 
eritics his essay in abstract thought lacks practical value because it 
underestimates the combative selfishness of individuals. Try to disguise 
it as one may, this quality is the one which has enabled man to emerge 
from savagery, to build up that most wonderful system of colonial 
organisation, the Roman Empire, and to shake off the barbaric lethargy 
which engulfed Europe in the centuries following the fall of Rome. The 
real problem is how to harness this combative selfishness. To eradicate 
it seems impossible, and it has never been difficult to find glaring 
examples of its insistence among the apostles of eradication. Why cry 
for the moon? Is it not wiser to recognise this quality as an inherent 
human characteristic, and whether we brand it as a vice or applaud it 
as a virtue endeayour to bend it to the elevation of mankind? For it 
could so be bent. Nature ignored or misunderstood is the enemy of 
man; nature studied and controlled is his friend. If the attacking 
force of this combative selfishness could be directed, not towards the 
perpetuation of quarrels between different races of mankind, but against 
nature, a limitless field for patience, industry, ingenuity, imagination, 
scholarship, aggressiveness, rivalry, and acquisitiveness would present 
itself; a field in which the disappointment of baffled effort would not 
need to seek revenge in the destruction of our fellow-creatures: a 
field in which the profit from successful enterprise would automatically 
spread through all the communities. Surely it is the nature-motive, 
as distinct from the state-motive or the world-motive, which alone can 
salvage civilisation. 
Before long, as history counts time, dire necessity will have impelled 
mankind to some such course. Already the straws are giving their 
proverbial indication. The demand for wheat by increasing popula- 
tions, the rapidly diminishing supplies of timber, the wasteful ravages 
of insect pests, the less obvious, but more insidious depredations of 
cur microscopic enemies, and the blood-curdling fact that a day must 
dawn when the last ton of coal and the last gallon of oil have been 
consumed, are all circumstances which, at present recognised by a small 
number of individuals comprising the scientific community, must 
inevitably thrust themselves upon mankind collectively. In the 
