530 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No 224. 



than to know. Belief adds nothing to cer- 

 tainty, and whatever is really true is the 

 very best thing that could be true, else it 

 had not been so. Dr. Brooks sees no reason 

 for hoping, fearing or wishing in regard to 

 truth. So long as it is true we can ask 

 nothing better, and no new truth can be 

 subversive of anything worth keeping in 

 our previous stock of beliefs and induc- 

 tions. 



Dr. Brooks shows in many cases that 

 problems over which scientific men have 

 worried for j^ears without result are at 

 bottom mere questions of words. The facts 

 at issue are recognized by all, but the 

 matter of their final interpretation is one 

 of the ultimate truths -which science can 

 never find out, for man can come in contact 

 with no ultimate truth of any sort. 



There is another class of problems 

 which can never be settled by argu- 

 ment. We must wait until we know 

 the truth. One of these concerns the ex- 

 istence of a principle of life which distin- 

 guishes vital processes from the operations 

 of ordinary chemistry and physics. " Many 

 biologists," says Brooks, '• find their greatest 

 triumph in the doctrine that the living body 

 is a 'mere machine;' but a machine is a 

 collocation of matter and energy working for 

 an end, not a spinning toy ; and when the 

 living machine is compared to the products 

 of human art the legitimate deduction is 

 that it is not merely a spinning eddy in a 

 stream of dead matter and mechanical en- 

 ergy, but a little garden in the physical 

 wilderness ; that the energy localized in 

 living bodies, directed by similarly localized 

 vitality, has produced a collocation of other 

 material bodies which could not be brought 

 about in a state of physical nature, and that 

 the distinction thus drawn between the 

 works of non-vital nature and those of life 

 is both useful and justifiable. "What this 

 distinction may mean in ultimate analysis 

 I know no more than Aristotle and Huxley ; 



nor do I believe that any one will ever 

 know until we find out. One thing we may 

 be sure of, that it does not mean that the liv- 

 ing world is anything but natural." Here 

 he quotes from Aristotle, " That is natural 

 ivhich holds good, either universally or gener- 

 ally." If anything occurs, it is, therefore, 

 natural. 



" Faith and hope are good things, no 

 doubt," says Dr. Brooks, " and 'expectation 

 is permissible when belief is not;' but ex- 

 j)erience teaches that the expectation or 

 faith of the master is very apt to become 

 belief in the mind of the student, and 

 ' science warns us that the assertion that 

 outstrips evidence is not only a blunder but 

 a crime.' " The key-note to the series of 

 lectures is found in the introductory sentence 

 that " life is response to the order]of nature." 

 " I should like to see hung ," he says, " on 

 the walls of every laboratory Herbert 

 Spencer's definition to the efiect that life is 

 not protoplasm but adjustment ; or the older 

 teaching of the father of zoology, that the 

 essence of a living thing is not what it is 

 made of nor what it does, but why it does it. " 



The study of biology is the study of re- 

 sponse and adaptation. The study of 

 structure is the consideration of concessions 

 to environment. The phases in develop- 

 ment are related to the stimuli, external or 

 internal, on which they are conditioned. 



" It follows that biology is the study of 

 response, and that the study of that order 

 of nature to which response is made is as 

 well within its province as the study of the 

 organism which responds, for all the knowl- 

 edge we can get of both these aspects of na- 

 ture is needed as a preparation for the 

 study of that relation between them which 

 constitutes life." 



The long dispute as to the inheritance 

 of acquired characters is fairly closed by 

 the words of Dr. Brooks. The arguments 

 drawn from philosophical or analogical 

 considerations are all brushed away, and 



