LIFE FROM THE BIOLOGIST'S STANDPOINT 187 



we say that the- new creation, the United States, contained some- 

 thing underived from the original states and their conditions? Shall- 

 we deny that our republic was contained potentially in the thirteen 

 original states? Surely not. But the processes of gestation and 

 parturition by which the nation came forth profoundly modified the 

 elements, the states. Only a wisdom practically infinite could have 

 foreseen exactly what those modifications would be. 6 



Growth and organization everywhere in living nature work inward 

 as well as outward. The processes turn back upon themselves and 

 produce changes in the contributing elements. What the new creation 

 will be, what modifications the elements wiU undergo, one can see 

 beforehand partly, but never fully. Only infinite wisdom could see 

 altogether. Notice under what conditions one's wisdom would enable 

 him to predict the future absolutely. Would not these two conditions 

 be essential: That his knowledge of tlie. past should be absolute, and 

 that the course of events, that is the laws of nature, should be absolutely 

 trustworthy ? 



Observation with our senses, of law-abiding operations, performed 

 by objects cognizable only through their own properties, is one way of 



6 The criticism has been made that in using the origin of the United States 

 as an illustration of the centripetal action of the developmental process, I am 

 resorting to the analogical mode of reasoning, the very thing I have objected 

 to in another connection. Attention must be called to the fact that it was not 

 the use but the illegitimate use of this method to which objection was made. 

 I am not pretending that the reciprocating action as it takes place in either 

 the animal body or the nation explains the process in the other. My point is 

 that in both cases the developmental process manifests this peculiarity. There 

 is a common element in the two developments. That is all I am insisting 

 on. But this must be taken in connection with the principle insisted on with 

 equal emphasis elsewhere, that each natural object has its own qualities and 

 properties. The man and the nation have something in common as to their 

 mode of development, but they also have something of difference. To ascertain 

 the differences and the trcdts-in-eommon all along the line is exactly what the 

 business of developmental biology is. 



Those biologists whose creed is that explanation of nature consists in 

 reducing her to a few simple principles will make wry faces if nothing worse 

 at this. But until such biologists can be more successful than they have been 

 so far, in preventing organic chemists from finding new compounds day by 

 day, and in suppressing systematic botanists and zoologists who persist in 

 hunting up new kinds of plants and animals, and new characteristics and 

 varieties of old ones, I see no prospect of these wry faces changing to expres- 

 sions of good cheer. 



It may be unfortunate that the living world is so complex, was not con- 

 structed on " a few simple principles." But one thing seems well established : 

 Nature can not be made simple by treating her on the theory that she ought to 

 be so when as a matter of fact she is not. To say that a few principles can be 

 found that are common to very wide domains of nature, and to deny that there 

 are numberless other principles not so widely prevalent are very different 

 propositions. 



