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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 971 



happily adjusted to those external rela- 

 tions which were never more complex or 

 more exacting than to-day, — this is our 

 problem. "We hear at present much of wars 

 and rumors of wars, and a new social 

 heaven — or at least a new earth that is to 

 become a new heaven. But the universe 

 moves on in its appointed ways. The sun 

 and the moon and the stars and the seasons 

 and day and night are with us, as of old. 

 Plants and animals only slowly change 

 their nature, and mankind is born and 

 lives and dies much as it has always done. 

 Art, to be sure, has become vastly longer, 

 but life is still nearly as short as ever and 

 relatively to the things to be seen, to be 

 learned and to be done, infinitely shorter. 

 The fundamental problem of all education, 

 namely, preparation for life, is therefore no 

 less, but rather infinitely more, important. 

 But with the aid of laboratories like this, 

 generously furnished by lovers of their 

 kind, in which wise teachers, themselves 

 models of devotion to truth and scholarly 

 living and endeavor, by means of examples, 

 epitomes and recapitulations of the great 

 experiments and discoveries of the past, 

 shall enable their pupils to appropriate for- 

 ever to themselves and to the service of man 

 the accumulating wisdom of the ages, we 

 may go forward with a cheerful courage. 

 Nor does it seem too much to believe that an 

 interpretation of nature which has robbed it 

 of most of the terrors which it possessed for 

 primitive man and has made it increasingly 

 serviceable to the race, will long endure. 



W. T. Sedgwick 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 



THE FITNESS OF OBGANISMS FSOM AN 

 EMBMYOLOGIST 'S VIEWPOINT ' 

 I AM glad to accept an invitation to address 

 this club, for I believe that it is an excellent 



^ Talk before the Agassiz Club of Cornell Uni- 

 versity, February 24, 1913. 



custom, indeed, almost necessary in these days 

 of specialization, for a biologist to look at his 

 problems now and then from others' points of 

 view and to be brought into contact with men 

 working on quite different aspects of life than 

 bis own. The same fundamental problems 

 face all workers in the biological field, be they 

 ecologists, structure-workers, process-workers, 

 breeders, or, I might add, workers in the broad 

 field of the medical sciences, for I believe that 

 the clinician fully appreciates that the prob- 

 lems of health and disease are. on one aspect 

 at least, problems of life and that medicine on 

 its science side belongs in the broad field of 

 biology. It is the unitary character of life 

 and life phenomena that binds us all together 

 and creates bonds of common interest and the 

 goal toward which we all must strive, whether 

 we know it or not — if the minor problems 

 which we attack are correctly solved — is the 

 explanation of life. 



It is a goal which perhaps we may never 

 reach or whose outline at some future time 

 will be made out in but crude and hazy form, 

 and yet it does us good ever and anon to pause 

 in our detailed work of analysis and technique 

 and turn our eyes in the direction we believe 

 it lies and to ponder on the road before; it 

 helps us I believe toward a clearer apprecia- 

 tion of the setting of the petty problems that 

 immediately confront us. Perspective is too 

 apt to be lost in the close scrutiny of high 

 specialization. In such a contemplation from 

 afar of the end-problem of the biologist, some, 

 overwhelmed by what lies between, believe it 

 unattainable; and others proclaim that the 

 solution is close at hand ; one sees in the intri- 

 cacies of life evidences of a vital force while 

 for his fellow-worker the explanation is to be 

 wrought out in terms of physics and chemistry 

 alone. For each the attitude of mind that will 

 color his speculations will be compounded out 

 of his personal make-up, the daily routine of 

 his work and the time and concentration that 

 he has devoted to it. The field naturalist 

 easily inclines toward vitalism; the bio- 

 chemist, perhaps, is biased toward a physico- 

 chemical interpretation; the structure-worker 

 — and in this group I would place myself — in 



