218 Foster: Integration tn Science. 
Moreover, in each study the machine heavily handicaps all 
knowledge which is not of a formal mechanical nature; it gives 
the prize to that kind.of knowledge which best suits a pointed 
question and a succinct answer ; for it works easily and exactly 
when it deals with the letter, but gets entangled and clogged 
when it tries to touch the spirit. Hence the student in anatomy, 
guided by the desire to come well out of the machine, spends his 
energies on the things of morphology, which can be swiftly 
learnt in the laboratory, with help of the microscope and the 
microtome, and afterwards deftly put down on paper; or busies 
himself with the formal questions of the school, in which the 
arguments for and against this or that view can be repeated with 
formal precision. In like manner the student of physiology, 
guided by a like desire, has his horizon likewise bounded by the 
laboratory and the discussions which arise out of laboratory 
work. 
And what can I say of the study of zoology? That is either 
pushed out altogether, or made a mere appendage to anatomy, 
a something to illustrate morphological laws and phylogenic 
speculations, or, if it is allowed to have an independent existence 
at all, becomes a gathering of the dry bones of formal schemes 
of classification. 
As the twig is bent so grows the.tree. The influence of our 
modern teaching is to intensify the differentiation, and with the 
differentiation the narrowness and formal character of the 
biologic learning of our 3 
There is a good old word, ‘naturalist,’ which, though it 
originally had to do with the nature of all things which exist, 
himself with ‘Nature’ as manifested in living creatures, who 
sought to solve all the problems which life presents. Form, 
structure, function, habits, history, all and each of these supplied 
him with facts from which he wrested his conclusions. Obser- 
vation was his chief tool, and the field his main workshop. To 
him invidious distinctions between different parts of biologic 
learning were unknown. e had not learnt to exalt either 
form or structure or function to the neglect of the rest. Every- 
thing which he could learn came to him as a help towards 
answering the questions which pressed on him for an answer. 
A naturalist of this kind, however—a whole-minded inquirer 
_ into the nature of living beings—is for the most part a thing of 
the past. He has well nigh disappeared through that process of 
Naturalist, 
