178 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVIII. No. 449. 



here and now, brings us face to face with 

 a biological principle to which we must all 

 bow in attempted improvements or ad- 

 vancement, that of changed environmental 

 relations and resulting modification there- 

 from. It can fairly be claimed that sci- 

 ence has bettered and is bettering the en- 

 vironment of the workers, while it is unit- 

 ing mankind in ever-widening bonds of 

 unity and cooperation. Holyoake has well 

 said: 'Cooperation is conmiercial peace, 

 competition is commercial war.' The rail- 

 roads that make possible scientific con- 

 gresses, the steamships that link the scien- 

 tists of continents in annual or triennial 

 reunion, the telephones that almost anni- 

 hilate phonic space, the food canning that 

 makes life agreeable in every clime are a 

 few of the many environmental products 

 of the past century, that link man to man 

 by chains of amity and peace,, and that 

 promote his international well-being. 



Are the laws of science then, as we ordi- 

 narily understand these, to be our sole guide 

 and rule in life? This inquiry causes me 

 to recur to Huxley's picture of life already 

 quoted. Are all the moves on the human 

 chess board to be dictated only by thoughts 

 of self-interest and self-preservation, or 

 even by thoughts on behalf of our friends 

 and offspring, as Huxley, in his later days, 

 attempted to prove. Some of the 'moves' 

 operated repeatedly in the world's past 

 have given us as an environmental human 

 outcome, products that we call 'strong 

 lives,' 'strenuous lives,' 'unscrupulous 

 lives,' 'useful lives,' 'instructive lives.' 

 But the greatest type, and the one that we 

 almost unconsciously worship is 'the beau- 

 tiful life. ' 



Every organism from amoeba to man lives 

 by a process that we may call ' organic mo- 

 leciilar equilibrium. ' When the supplies of 

 life energy and food integration exceed the 

 dissipations and disintegration, growth and 



development proceed. When both are bal- 

 anced maturity has been attained. When the 

 converse to the first holds true, decaj^ sets in. 

 Applying this fundamental principle to 

 our common human life, the highest human 

 scientific aspiration might be expressed in 

 the aphorism 'society an organism.' Such 

 a condition society is far from having at- 

 tained to. But like all organic bodies, if 

 it is rightly to perform its functions, and 

 to perpetuate its like, such it should be- 

 come. At present, even in its highest ex- 

 pression, it consists of human molecules 

 that often exhibit abundant energy, that 

 undergo permutations and combinations, 

 that show affinities and repulsions, but that 

 lack some form of energy necessary to link 

 them into an organic whole, to give them 

 social equilibrium and stability. Society 

 has been struggling through millennia to 

 become an organism, has been searching for 

 that energy and that source of energy that 

 will give it life equilibrium. At times and 

 in places the result seemed to have been 

 achieved, only again to be impaired, or 

 lost amid a chaos of discords, by the dis- 

 rupting agency of one or of a few un- 

 scrupulous souls, who have acted like a 

 disorganizing ferment on the organizing 

 mass. 



Though unfashionable with many to-day, 

 and not least with the followers of science, 

 the only motive form of human energy that 

 has stood the test, and that is stronger to- 

 day than ever before, is the power, the 

 force of love, of compassion, of sympathj^ 

 as communicated by the greatest social 

 lawgiver the world has seen. The early 

 founders of Christianity were charged with 

 it, and for three centuries they shook and 

 finally subdued the Roman empire. We 

 have it in our midst and it lives through all 

 the upheavals consequent on human com- 

 petition, on commercial war. In our hos- 

 pitals, in our college settlements, in our 



