January 30, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



95 



giving, or altruistic. Botli are cooperative 

 functions; in action, continuous; in rightness, 

 cumulative; in effect, creative. 



The renaissance of to-day has its chief 

 creative impulse in the consciousness of evo- 

 lution. This revelation of modern science, 

 which we all acknowledge as our guiding star, 

 has come to mean world-growth, or the pro- 

 gressive organization and architectural up- 

 building of nature. !N"ature is now the source 

 of our authority, and creative nature-action, 

 as expressed in nature-growth, is the stand- 

 ard of all our values. Science is therefore 

 compelled to express all her measurements in 

 jwsitive and negative constructive terms, 

 which ultimately must be oriented in refer- 

 ence to this gradient base line of nature- 

 progress, called evolution. 



In this nature-growth, we fail to discover 

 any gain or loss, either in basic constructive 

 matter, or in energy. But gain there must 

 be, if evolution is a reality. That gain is, in 

 reality, a moral and ethical gain, or a gain in 

 that creative action and constructive right- 

 ness which we call organization and directive 

 discipline. There are no better positive and 

 negative terms to express those gains, both 

 relatively and absolutely, than the familiar 

 terms, right and wrong, good and evil. 



On this point, therefore, there need be no 

 equivocation in our message. The profit in 

 evolution is in better constructive action. 

 By the conservation of these profits, nature 

 augments her capital in constructive right- 

 ness. 



But how is this profit made and conserved? 

 That is the really vital question. Until it is 

 answered there can be no underlying intel- 

 lectual stability in human life, individually, 

 or socially; no basic unity of purpose in 

 human conduct. Here otu- vision is not so 

 clear. Many of us believe that on this point 

 we have no comprehensive message to give. 



The most familiar attempts to explain how 

 evolution takes place are restricted to special 

 aspects of evolution, and are often epitomized 

 in personal names, such as Darwinism, La- 

 markism, Weismannism, Mendelism. Among 



us there are natiu-alists, morphologists, phys- 

 iologists, and psychologists; breeders, experi- 

 mentiilists, and bio-chemists. And surroimd- 

 ing us on all sides are the physicists, chemists, 

 geologists, and astronomers, with whom we 

 must reckon, for their domains and their sub- 

 ject matter overlap ours in countless ways. 



But unfortunately between all these workers 

 there is little common understanding and 

 much petty criticism. 



Are we building out of aimless contribu- 

 tions to science a new Babel's tower of dis- 

 jointed, slippery words, with nothing to hold 

 them to constructive lines, and preserve the 

 unity of purpose in our social architecture? 



Perhaps the most comprehensive terms, al- 

 though they have little meaning outside the 

 organic world, are " natural selection," the 

 " struggle for existence," and the " survival of 

 the fittest." But granting their validity within 

 the organic world, they have no definite moral 

 significance. They convey no implication as to 

 how man, or anything else, must act in order 

 to exist, to say nothing of surviving. What 

 is the fittest? Why is it fit? Why does it 

 survive? If right combinations happen pri- 

 marily by chance, why, or how, do they come 

 to happen regularly ? How can " right acci- 

 dents " become cumulative, or lawful, or deter- 

 minate, unless there is a saving, or more 

 enduring, directive element in that something 

 we call rightness? 



When the layman makes his holiday call 

 on his biological menagerie and points his 

 umbrella at us, hoping to receive through that 

 safety-first device a brush discharge of in- 

 formation, we fail to " come across " with 

 illuminating answers to these very pertinent 

 questions. But to conceal our low potential, 

 and preserve our self-respect, we all resort to 

 certain unintelligible sounds, or warning sig- 

 nals, according to the particular pen in which 

 we have been bred and exercised, and which 

 are guaranteed to scare away, or charm into 

 inaction, the most intrepid questioner. One 

 mumbles something about " environment " and 

 " ecology," and crawls back into the bushes. 

 Another wheezes something about " enzymes " 

 and "vitality"' and goes on with his experi- 

 menting. Another climbs to the top of his 



