LIFE FROM THE BIOLOGISTS STANDPOINT 175 



. . .; then may we not say that the actions to be formed must come before that 

 which forms them . . . that the continuous change which is the basis of func- 

 tion, must come before the structure that brings function into shape? 1 



Greatly to Mr. Spencer's credit he tells us in another connection (p. 

 197), that " in truth this question is not determinable by any evidence 

 now accessible." We must go a long way beyond this position and 

 recognize that not only is the question not determinable "by any evi- 

 dence now accessible," but that there is not the slightest indication that 

 such evidence ever will be accessible. What we have to see is that all 

 such discussions are utterly futile for science; indeed, that they have 

 no legitimate place in inductive science. 



Has anybody ever seen an egg that was not produced by some 

 organism; some function without structure, or vice versa; some life 

 without organization, or organization independent of life ? Surely not. 

 Then equally surely you can make no assumption that involves the 

 disjunction of either member of one of these couples from the other, 

 without attempting to transcend experience — without becoming in so 

 far an a priorist pure and simple. 



Now you may perhaps have the privilege of being an a priorist pure 

 and simple, if you want it, but in case you choose thus you can not have 

 a seat in the temple of physical science for one instant. On the basis 

 of experience science can project itself far in advance of experience, but 

 only on that basis can it thus project itself. 



So much for the data, the starting places of biology. They are 

 individual animals and plants, living in nature. It is wholesome for 

 any domain of science to stop now and then and ask what its original 

 data are. Such inquiry not only yields enlightenment, interesting and 

 useful of itself, but it is further illuminating as to the way a science 

 deals, and must deal, with its raw material — its " givens." 



Notice the procedure in a special case. Observe how oceanography 

 proceeds in studying the Pacific Ocean. Of what is that vast sea com- 

 posed? First of all of water, H 2 0. No doubt about that. Dis- 

 solved in this are various mineral salts, chlorides of sodium and 

 magnesium, particularly, and the gases 0, N and C0 2 . These with 

 perhaps a few other elements and the ocean is chemically accounted 

 for. Yet how far have we gone toward a knowledge of the Pacific 

 Ocean when we have found that it is thus constituted? Even though 

 we should have ascertained the total quantity of water, salts and gases 

 in the entire Pacific, we should have scarcely made a beginning on the 

 oceanography of this body of water. Its form and boundaries; its 

 connections with other oceans; the character of its bottom; its islands, 

 continental and oceanic; its currents; its tides; the up- welling waters 

 on its eastern margins; its temperature in general, and in particular 

 parts, and dozens of other matters, are quite over and beyond anything 



3 " Principles of Biology," Vol. I., p. 210. 



