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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLVI 



capable of showing that this animal is a cow. Even if we 

 reduce its tissues to their constituent chemical elements, 

 and, not content with this, continue until we have shown 

 that a horse is entirely composed of electrons, and their 

 activities, how could this show that a horse is not a horse? 

 If therefore resolution can detract nothing from the 

 things analyzed, it is clear that if these are in any way 

 unique, they will be no less so after this process than be- 

 fore. The only question which can be at issue is whether 

 living things are, or are not, unique. To this only an 

 affirmative answer is possible. 



To reason with defectives is unprofitable for they have 

 no organ with which to perceive the qualities by which 

 we differentiate between the organic and the inorganic. 

 If we ask ourselves how we make this distinction we 

 naturally think of the fact that living things are ma- 

 chines with the power, as Loeb puts it, of automatic self- 

 preservation and reproduction. All the wonderful proc- 

 esses for which in the aggregate this simple formula 

 stands divide animals and plants sharply from matter 

 not alive and constitute the specific basis for the auton- 

 omy of our science. This autonomy is nothing meta- 

 physical, or absolute, but practical, like the autonomy of 

 physics, chemistry, astronomy and geology. 



Historical Background of the Postulated Absolute 

 Autonomy 



In their analyses of living things, modern biologists 

 make use of only one practical method, but they apply it 

 from two distinct points of view, and since the signifi- 

 cance of phenomena in general depends on the point of 

 view, the whole meaning of the science hangs in the bal- 

 ance. The validity of these theoretical standpoints, 

 therefore, should be tested as carefully as the proposed 

 site of an observatory. 



Unfortunately the issues at stake can not be properly 

 apprehended without some knowledge of their history. 

 To begin with Aristotle, and the few Ionians and Eleat- 



