314 SCIENCE. 
for their own individual pleasure, improve- 
ment or happiness, but only for the com- 
munity. If socialists will study this and 
other examples of states which have reso- 
lutely worked out the social problems to 
a successful finish they will perhaps get an 
inkling of how far off is the realization of 
all Utopias, of even the noble aspirations of 
our own National Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. Their realization is far off 
and difficult or impossible because the 
struggles of individualism are never com- 
patible with perfect socialism. It is not 
possible to serve both the state and the 
individual with one’s whole power. If 
there is partial service, as there must be in 
human society, neither the state nor the 
individual will have the most perfect de- 
velopment. The parallelogram of forces will 
give a resultant to be sure, but so far this 
resultant has proved a tortuous and un- 
satisfactory line instead of the perfect form 
of beauty dreamed of by the enthusiasts. * 
In this brief review I have tried to show 
a few ways in which the study of domestic 
animals has thrown light on the problems 
confronting mankind in his social ideals, in 
preventive medicine, in physiology and 
hygiene, in embryology and comparative 
anatomy and in the doctrine of the evolu- 
tion of organic forms. The attempt has 
been made to show that, with the higher 
forms at least, that is the forms most 
closely related to man, and with whose des- 
tiny his own economic, hygienic and social 
relations are most closely interwoven, the 
domestic animals have in the past and 
promise in the future to serve the best pur- 
pose because of the abundance of the ma- 
terial in quite widely separated groups of 
animals which long have been and still are 
* The reader who is interested in sociology is ad- 
vised to read the admirable articles of Mrs. Anna 
Botsford Comstock on Insect Socialism in The Chau- 
tauquan for 1898, Nos. 4, 5and 6; also Shaler’s ‘ Do. 
mesticated Animals,’ for their influence in civilization. 
[N. S. Vox. X. No. 245. 
under greatly differing conditions and sur- 
roundings; and, finally, because this ma- 
terial is plentiful and under control, and 
thus may be studied throughout the entire 
life cycle. 
If any one is repelled from the study of 
domestic animals because they have been 
greatly modified by their so-called artificial 
surroundings in the company of man, I 
would remind him that man is also a part 
of nature, and that the modifications due 
to his action simply illustrate, in a some- 
what definite and determinable degree, the 
plasticity of the, forms under his control, 
and thus give the clearest and most un- 
deniable proof of the capability of change 
in response to environment and selection. 
Furthermore, any wild form chosen for in- 
vestigation has likewise departed widely 
from its primitive state, under the stress of 
changed and changing environment and a 
selection somewhat different but none the 
less severe. It is also contended that the 
knowledge of the environment of these do- 
mestic members of the zoological family 
for so long a time has been of the utmost 
help to many of the ablest workers, as one 
can infer from the quotation from Darwin 
in the earlier part of this address. There 
has been and still is too great a tendency 
in biology to study forms remote and inac- 
cessible. This is, perhaps, partly due to 
the fascination of the unknown and the 
distant; and the natural depreciation of 
what is at hand. But study of these sup- 
posedly generalized types has proved more 
or less disappointing. No forms now liy- 
ing are truly primitive and generalized 
throughout. They may be in parts, but in 
parts only. The stress of countless ages 
has compelled them to adjust themselves to 
their changing environment, to specialize 
in some directions so far that the clue 
through them to the truly primitive type 
is very much tangled or often wholly lost. 
Indeed, every group is in some features 
ae Fe ee 
