D.— ZOOLOGY. 109 



practice, form serious obstacles in the way of those who would find in 

 signed agreements between different nations a sure shield against the 

 danger of war. 



The Biological Outlook. 



Finally, our training, if successful in inducing in our citizen's mind 

 what we may call the ' biological outlook,' enables him to take a fresh 

 and an enlightening view even of that distressful subject, economics. 

 He appreciates more fully how the customary units of the economist, 

 pounds and dollars, are merely tokens with local values dependent on their 

 power of purchase. In a remote spot on the earth's surface, a pile of 

 golden coins becomes merely so much workable material out of which 

 articles useful or ornamental may be fashioned ; a bundle of scrip becomes 

 material of possible use for kindling a fire. Their actual value bears no 

 relation whatever to their token value in other circumstances. 



Our citizen from his biological view-point looks beyond this veil of 

 make-believe and realises that the true unit of value is the capacity of the 

 human individual. He sees in each individual a biological capitalist. 

 His store of capital may be small or large. It may consist of the precious 

 bullion, intellectual power, or the humbler metal, bodily strength. And the 

 store, small or great as it was to begin with, may have been simply left like 

 talents buried in the earth, or by education it may have been increased in 

 amount and coined into the kind of currency, such as skill in handicraft 

 or other form of social activity, which gives it its greatest local value 

 in the community. 



To what End? 



But now the question may fairly be put : what good would come of it 

 all were the biologist given his way, and his subject, resting on a basis of 

 elementary physical science, accorded the place in the ordinary school 

 curriculum that he claims for it ? How might it fairly be expected to work 

 out in practice to the advantage of the community and of the individual 

 citizen ? 



To state adequately the answer to this question would exhaust the 

 time not merely of one address but of many, and I can only indicate one 

 or two points which the answer would include. The scientific training we 

 are arguing for would in the first place be a potent power on the side of 

 social stability, inasmuch as it would help to develop the scientific habit 

 of mind with its constant distrust of the ably stated ' case.' There is no 

 more potent defence against the plausible rhetoric of the advocate than 

 infusion of the scientific habit of bringing verbal statements up against 

 the touchstone of actual fact. 



With recognition of the principle that the welfare and happiness of the 

 individual citizen is by no means independent of the material prosperity of 

 the community, proper appreciation would be given to biological economics. 

 It would be recognised that the training of the individual citizen must 

 include the scrutiny of the nature and amount of his biological capital, 

 and the taking of appropriate measures to increase his stock and to ensure 

 its being minted into the most suitable form of currency. 



Individual scrutiny would in turn drive home the necessity of confining 

 within as narrow limits as possible the workings of the principle of mass 



