90 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 498. 



environment in which they will remain so.* 

 The chief efiect of these abstractions is to 

 breed others as hypothetical as themselves. 

 The facts are very simple, the abstractions be- 

 come vastly complicated. Biologists are zeal- 

 ous for mechanical theories of their own mak- 

 ing, but when Lord Kelvin fails to recognize 

 these as adequate from the physical point of 

 view and offers a ' vital principle ' instead, the 

 gift is rejected without thanks, and with the 

 ungracious reply that it is a cast-off notion 

 which ceased to be useful many years ago. 



If evolution is ever explained in physical 

 terms it will probably be done by making 

 generous additions to the recognized proper- 

 ties of matter, a course to which physicists are 

 certainly nothing loth, but they are duly 

 warned by Professor Lankester that such 

 ' facile and sterile hypotheses ' will not satisfy 

 biologists. Indeed, it may be that the failure 

 to recognize a distinct category of vital phe- 

 nomena lies not so much in what might be 

 called a materialization of life as in a certain 

 vitalization of matter. We predicate for mat- 

 ter our own mechanical limitations and refuse 

 to consider such a possibility as the interaction 

 or mutual sensitiveness of matter through 

 space, although the alternative theories of 

 ethereal media are extremely complicated and 

 contradictory. 



Comprehension versus Formulation. — Phys- 

 ics is considered fundamental to biology be- 

 cause organisms are made of matter, but biol- 

 ogy is in advance of physics in the apprehen- 

 sion of its phenomena, and we are as likely to 

 learn physics from biology as biology from 

 physics. Life is, as it were, superposed on 

 matter, and personality on life; each must 

 have the qualities which make the next stage 

 possible, but each stage may be viewed also on 

 a plane of its own, and our intimate acquaint- 

 ance with phenomena has not gone up from the 



* " * * * the loAV of heredity, would, if 

 nothing interfered, keep the descendants perfectly 

 true to the physical characters of their ancestors; 

 they would breed true and be exactly alike." — 

 Coues. 



" Were it possible for growth to take place un- 

 der absolutely constant external influences, varia- 

 tion would not occur. * * * " — Weismann. 



bottom of the pyramid, but from the top down. 

 The ultimate facts of matter appear funda- 

 mental from the mechanical standpoint, but 

 the fabric of knowledge has been constructed 

 thus far without them, and science must con- 

 tinue to advance laboriously from the known 

 to the unknown. It may be illogical to dis- 

 cover the basal facts last, but such is the 

 indication of history, to which it is well to be 

 reconciled. 



Every-day objects and incidents are the last 

 to secure critical study and scientiiic elucida- 

 tion; it is the obscure and incomprehensible 

 which challenges our curiosity. Primitive man 

 seems to have taken interest first in dreams 

 and specters. Astronomy, as incidental to 

 astrology, was the earliest of the physical sci- 

 ences, and still owes much of its popularity to 

 the instinctive attraction of mystery and awe. 

 With mental habits and instincts formed by 

 such a history it is not strange that thought 

 still travels unwillingly from the remote and 

 abstract to the concrete and adjacent, and that 

 even in science we are continually tempted to 

 value formulation above concrete perception, 

 and to confuse abstraction with generalization. 

 The cabala is discarded and the syllogism is 

 distrusted; in time it will become apparent 

 that even the mathematical equation yields 

 only the amount of comprehension originally 

 put into it, and has no virtue beyond any 

 other method of accurate statement. The 

 ' complete mechanical theory of the universe ' 

 is not yet, nor is its completion to be hastened 

 by eking out the hewn stones of ascertained 

 fact with blocks of the dried mud of abstrac- 

 tion. Such material may be very useful in 

 temporary shelters for the workmen, but it 

 has no place in the permanent structure. 



A General Classification of Phenomena. — 

 Although abstractions and ' hypothetical en- 

 tities ' must be excluded from among the re- 

 sults of scientific study, there is still great 

 need of general terms as a means of arranging 

 ideas and classifying facts. It is here that 

 biology may possibly aid her sister sciences, 

 since biological classification is more concrete 

 than any other, being based on ascertained 

 causal sequence or common descent. Other 

 classifications are of value in proportion as 



