VI. 

 THE SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTION OF LIFE. 



Your Excellencies! 



Biology is the supreme science from which we still await 

 the solution of very many problems. Unfortunately, biology 

 has not yet become a united science, but consists of sundry 

 disciplines more or less separated from one another. The 

 number of species of living beings is enormous, so that it is 

 impossible for a single investigator to become familiar with all 

 the phenomena. According to a recent estimate of Pratt,^" 

 published in 191 1, the number of known animal species is 

 522,400. The number of species yet to be described is cer- 

 tainly also very great, and we have further to reckon with the 

 considerable, though smaller, number of species of plants. 



We all know that there are two chief types of naturalists: 

 first, of those who incline to observation; and second, of those 

 who inchne to experiments. It occurs very exceptionally only 

 that a naturalist is gifted equally in both directions, and hence 

 we see that biologists for the most part are either morpholo- 

 gists or physiologists. We divide up biology into single 

 sciences merely to adapt it to the capacity of the individual. 

 An able savant may perhaps be a zoologist, an embryologist, 

 a biological chemist, a physiologist, or a paleontologist, but 

 he cannot be a real biologist. We can expect only from the 

 future such a fusion of the results of our many and many- 

 sided biological investigations as will create a true and real 

 biology. To attain this result the work of many men will be 



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