118 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LII. No. 1336 



merely energy but choice — ^plasticity driven to 

 choose or fail; thus new devices are tried and 

 new habits established. So likewise Dr. Top- 

 ley has dwelt upon a microbe acquiring a ca- 

 jpaoity to bring about certain fermentations,^ 

 an ability, as he says, " to be regarded as some- 

 thing inherent in the organism itself." We 

 may be reminded also of Professor Stanley 

 Gardiner's " education " of his oysters — a very 

 curious observation. 



So far as I can think upon it there seems to 

 be but one alternative hypothesis, but this does 

 not cover so many phenomena. As I have 

 said, if the vibrations of an alien cell are out 

 of range of a certain body cell so as just to 

 be indifferent but yet not far out of range, the 

 vibrations of the one might induce like vibra- 

 tions in the other, and meaniwhile interference 

 waves would arise in the field; thus disturb- 

 ances — symptoms — would begin and continue 

 until the two sets of waves should blend into 

 unison; and this would mean acquired im- 

 m.unity. If a number of wag-at-the-wall 

 clocks are hung near each other, in a calculable 

 time they will get to swing in unison. But this ' 

 hypothesis does not lead on, as does the trial 

 and error hypothesis, to larger and larger 

 gains. We see only a discord and a mode of 

 requiescence; no line of development. What 

 we apprehend is something more, than orderli- 

 ness of chemical reaction; that cells are teach- 

 able; a key to illimitaible progress. Was not 

 Coleridge right when he said 



For I had found 

 That outward forms, the loftiest, still receive 

 Their final influence from the Life within. 



, I am not for one moment forgetting that the 

 physical modes of energy — adsorption, surface 

 tension, and so forth — ^may count for much in 

 these advances, arrests, immunities, and dis- 

 integrations. Adsorption, or other physical 

 condition, may put up a block. How remark- 

 able are the effects of anesthesia and palsy 

 which may follow injections of sodium oxalate 

 and magnesium sulphate, and of their quick 

 removal by calcium salts ; indeed the whole in- 



* Lancet, May 22, 1920, where he quotes "Pen- 

 fold and others." 



fluence of calcium on metabolism — ^probably 

 all of them surface (interface) actions, as of 

 any radio-active element upon cell function.*^ 

 Indeed, as in the relation of foodstuffs to 

 amines, so in the physics of the cell we may 

 discover a comparative accessibility and in- 

 telligibility of the processes of life — ^Poineare's 

 " simplicite cache." It seems that G-od has more 

 " respect to the measure and ease of the human 

 understanding" than Boyle supposed. 



Thus we are led to the thaumaturgic word 

 " Research " which, for some of us, means re- 

 mote and rather unreal speculations ; for others 

 the discovery of short cuts to making more 

 money; for others again the ideal of pure 

 knowledge. Research may be regarded as of 

 two kinds, as natural observation and as arti- 

 ficial experiment; the one yielding more and 

 more to the other as investigation penetrates 

 from the more superficial to the deeper proc- 

 esses. Still, if we are to surprise and " cap- 

 ture wild nature in her secret paths," the two 

 |Ways are strictly inseparable. Indeed the in- 

 finitely little does man more harm than the 

 enormously great. War may bring with it 

 some redemptive virtues; pestilence only raw 

 superstitions. The advance of the last half 

 century from the deadhouse pathology to more 

 refined and penetrating methods we have wit- 

 nessed in our time, and yet more intimate 

 methods, those of biochemistry for instance, are 

 being rapidly unfolded. Research, as it is 

 working to-day, advances from fixed and meas- 

 ured bases; as observation it watches nature's 

 march past; then as experiment it puts events 

 to test under artificial conditions of separation 

 or isolation, and measures their phases. But 

 the laboratory can not, as nature does, con- 

 trive the unexpected; so we must " gear up our 

 tiny machines to the vast wheel of nature," and 

 try for a first roughing out of an idea or con- 

 cept. If we are to select our facts to any con- 

 siderable pirrpose as crucial, we must first have 

 an idea in our minds; and for this a certain 

 kind of imagination is needed, one of general 

 concepts rather than of the concrete individual- 

 izing imagination of the artist. Thus there 



6 Gates and Meltzer, Rockf. St., Vol. XXV., and 

 Jour, of Physiol., February 20, 1920. 



