474 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LI. No. 1324 



to the war, and the savage bitterness with 

 which it was fought by its instigators. 



It certainly behooves us as evolutionists to 

 endeavor to clear up in a fashion not yet, in 

 my opinion, adequately accomplished, the re- 

 lation of Darwin's great concepts to such 

 struggles, not that I assume that any one has 

 the illuminating word now ready to be spoken. 

 It is sufficiently obvious that a vast amount of 

 further study of the problemis and relations in- 

 volved in the evolution of races, states, so- 

 cieties and civilization, as well as human in- 

 dividuals, is necessary before the concepts of 

 struggle, progress, survival, etc., will attain a 

 clearness which will finally prevent their use 

 as the shibboleths of barbarism and savagery. 

 As scientists we must all agree that in in- 

 creased devotion to research and in the growth 

 of that passion for understanding the living 

 organism, its environment, its origin and its 

 possibilities, our safety for the future lies. 

 ]S"o ready made or lightly thought out theories 

 will suffice. The danger from lightly con- 

 ceived and lightly held political evolutionary 

 theories promulgated by visionary and ill- 

 trained statesmen and politicians, was never 

 more real. The misuse of scientific half 

 .truths, misleading phrases and superficial 

 analyses, was never more threatening than just 

 now, when the central empires are endeavoring 

 to regain their poise after their debauch of 

 mad ambition. It is for scientists in the fu- 

 ture to set an example of discriminating judg- 

 ment and careful analysis of evidence of which 

 they have not hitherto been capable. 

 I The practical issues of the day we may say 

 in a sense are still in the hands of men rather 

 .than of scientists and will be met and their 

 problems solved instinctively and in accord 

 with moral aspirations rather than by the ap- 

 plication of established principles and concepts 

 as to the nature and possibilities of further 

 .development of human societies and civiliza- 

 tions. The great men, the leaders, are so by 

 virtue of an instinctive rather than analyzed 

 feeling as to what is possible and achievable 

 in the given conditions. The pragmatist with 

 his worship of the man in the street may feel 

 sure that this will always be the case, but in 



this assertion he loses whatever of truth there 

 is in his philosophy and becomes the plain and 

 familiar dogmatist of the past. 



It is for us to see that a continually increas- 

 ing number of those who are great leaders by 

 virtue of their instinctive grasp of the signifi- 

 cance of human movements and world situa- 

 tions, are also able to avail themselves of an 

 increasing mass of analyzed and tested data 

 bearing on the problems of life and evolution- 

 ary progress. 



, As a physiologist I may note that the stimu- 

 lation of research does not involve the produc- 

 tion of the fundamental motive power back of 

 the advance of knowledge. Physiological stim- 

 uli liberate energies accumulated in the organ- 

 ism they guide and regulate activity but fur- 

 nish no appreciable energy for its maintenance. 

 They initiate reactions but do not cause them. 

 The familiar illustrations of their nature and 

 relations to organic activities are the pull on 

 the trigger or the engineer's hand on the 

 throttle. If there is no research mechanism 

 well stocked with mental energy stimidation 

 can do nothing. It may even weaken and de- 

 stroy if the energies for normal reaction are 

 not available. 



Physiologically speaking the regulative stim- 

 uli, those wonderful activities of the enzymes 

 and hormones which can accelerate or retard, 

 direct and coordinate reactions so as to pro- 

 duce the complex and wonderfully adaptive 

 phenomena of organic growth and behavior are 

 those most interesting in present-day biolog- 

 ical research and furnish the analogies on 

 which the widespread demand for better con- 

 trol and coordination of scientific research is 

 based. Why is it not our highest function as 

 scientists to so regulate control and coordinajte 

 research that each problem shall receive its fit 

 proportion of attention so that now when the 

 world seems to need above all food supplies, a 

 speedy physical rehabilitation to repair the 

 wounds of war and a special set of political 

 and social maxims for the use of nations in 

 the transition from autocratic to more demo- 

 cratic governmental forms the whole energies 

 of the world of science, political, social and 

 biological, can be turned to producing these 



