306 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1052 



Seylla and the Charybdis between which 

 human society must pick its devious way. 



Both are evil. Of the two, monopoly may 

 be the lesser : it may be more easily brought 

 under control ; it tends to be more progres- 

 sive; it extends less far; it may be the less 

 hateful. They are only two expressions of 

 one thing, one possibly worse than the other. 

 Probably there are peoples who pride them- 

 selves on more or less complete escape from 

 monopoly who are nevertheless suffering 

 from the most deadening bureaucracy — the 

 insistence on mere governmental accuracy 

 and eiSciency. 



Agriculture is in the foundation of 

 the political, economic and social struc- 

 ture. If we can not develop starting- 

 power in the background people, we can 

 not maintain it elsewhere. The greatness 

 of all this rural work is to lie in the re- 

 sults and not in the methods that absorb 

 so much of our energy. If agriculture 

 can not be democratic, then there is no 

 democracy. L. H. Bailey 



MICROBIAL ASSOCIATIONS^ 

 Sociology, as it is generally conceived, 

 conveys a knowledge of the human as a 

 social and ethical creature and maintains 

 for him an harmonious relation to his social 

 environment, as well as considers human 

 society in its ensemble. As an individual, 

 man 's composite is different from what it is 

 as a social factor. His attitude toward self 

 is not his attitude toward society at large. 

 Perhaps primitive man was concerned with 

 self only, but with the development of soci- 

 ety this limitation was not possible. Man, 

 as he at present exists, has multiplied his 

 individual and social functions. He has 

 developed highly ethical relationships. 

 Under existing conditions, too, he would be 

 wholly helpless without his social ties. 



1 Address of the president. Society of American 

 Bacteriologists. 



To the biologist, this situation with man, 

 aside from his ethical nature, may be re- 

 garded in large measure as material, bio- 

 logical, and may be pertinently designated 

 as special functional development. To the 

 human sociologist, however, the avenue of 

 approach is through the human as a tran- 

 scendent being in possession of other char- 

 acteristics than material, and in no sense 

 an animal, but a creature divested of 

 brutish instincts. The spiritual is given 

 command over material functioning. Bio- 

 logical materialism apparently yields to the 

 enshrouding and directing forces of human- 

 ism or human ethics. Notwithstanding, the 

 biologist feels and beholds as such a sociol- 

 ogy of plants and animals that is very 

 similar, and, furthermore, he sees written 

 in their histories and associations most of 

 the directive agencies operative in human 

 society, only with less ethical exaltation. 



This larger sociology, for such it is if we 

 study human sociology biologically as well 

 as through its superficial subjective mani- 

 festations, has much interest which is of 

 useful significance. It would not be so 

 difficult to establish parallelisms and ex- 

 pressions of man as an animal in every 

 fifeld of biology, if that were our object. 

 This would, moreover, be a comparative 

 study which can not occupy our attention, 

 for it would lead us far from our purposes. 

 The microbial world, our own province of 

 study, offers itself for specific consideration 

 and is of peculiar and paramount interest 

 to a microbiologist. The possible extensive 

 field of biological sociology just hinted at 

 is used rather to open our minds for the 

 possibilities contained therein. 



The microbe, by itself or in pure culture, 

 is only one phase of its existence. In com- 

 pany with other species quite another phase 

 is presented, and this is determined by the 

 associated species and by the many condi- 

 tions under which these associations may be 



