LIFE FROM THE BIOLOGISTS STANDPOINT 183 



This zoologist, it is hardly necessary to say, is an elementalist at 

 heart. Plants and animals, as nature presents them, are for him real 

 in a way. They are of course what our naked, crass senses come in 

 contact with, but the real essence of them, the thing we want to get 

 at, lies far away in the germ-cells, in the chromosomes, in protoplasm. 

 There is reality. There is the pole-star by which our compass should 

 be set, according to his views. 



The consistent elementalist can not care much for description and 

 classification, for these depend in the first instance on " mere qualities," 

 while he is concerned with essences. The elementalist's problems, like 

 the pure intellectualist's, are always ultimate problems. For both any- 

 thing this side of the absolute is only appearance. 



There is prevalent among many influential biologists, unfortunately 

 for practical ends, a tendency to esteem what are called " gross " 

 anatomy and physiology as of no great scientific value. To the ele- 

 mentalist this is bound to be so. The structures and the activities of 

 your bodies, as the anatomist and physiologist of the ordinary kind 

 sees them, are not their fundamentally real structures and activities. 

 These are deep hidden in the uttermost recesses of your members. 

 They are " probably " your proteid compounds, especially your enzymes. 



One of the best characterization-marks of elementalist biology 

 is the expression " nothing but." What is the human brain ? It is 

 "nothing but" a vast multitude of ganglionic cells (9,200,000,000' 

 in the cortex alone), if the answer comes from a cellular elementalist; 

 or it is " nothing but " a still greater number of chromosomes, if the 

 elementalist be of the consistently orthodox chromosomal persuasion. 



And what are the so-called emotions of the human breast? In 

 last analysis they are " nothing but " chemical substances in unstable 

 equilibrium, or in some other state. 



Ernst Mach, that prince of modern elementalists, quotes Litchen- 

 berg approvingly as follows : " "We should say It thinks, just as we say 

 It lightens. It is going too far to say cogito if we translate cogito by 

 I think. The assumption, or postulation, of the ego is a mere practical 

 necessity." What sort of necessity, if not practical necessity, do these 

 people believe in? Seemingly it is theoretical or impractical necessity, 

 or both. 



The answer to those who hold such views is obvious: If you want 

 to call yourself " It " why, go ahead. But I propose to call myself 

 " I " and no power in heaven or on earth can compel me to call my- 

 self " It." I may not be able fully to define my " I." Surely I am 

 not, for full definition comes at the end and not at the beginning of 

 experiential knowledge. But however incomplete my definition be,, 

 here I am. " The proof of the pudding is the eating." 



Why do the elementalists pin their faith to the invisible constituents 

 of things rather than to the things themselves? Can it be that tbey 



