ORGANIC DEPENDENCE AND DISEASE 
113 
To the thoughtful person who concedes that the physical 
and the intellectual functions of man can be apprehended 
only in the light of their historic development and through 
an understanding of their vast ancestry; who grants that 
the laws of life are uniform and effect the same governance 
whether in man or the insect; and who sees that the read- 
ing of the law is clearest where the tablet on which it is in- 
scribed is least obscured, in its simplest manifestation 
rather than in its most complicated effects ; to such as these 
the data and conclusions here should prove operative argu- 
ments. To those who have accustomed themselves rather 
to deductive thinking, who have been wont to conceive that 
the nature of man is to be construed from subjective and 
projected conceptions of what ought to be in order to con- 
form to an introspectional standard; those who have not 
yet fully learned their subjection to Nature’s laws, are en- 
grossed with the passing interpretations of social prob- 
lems, with expediences of the statute and the cares of the 
world; to these should go the assurance that in greater 
measure than they may have suspected the clue to human 
destiny and social adjustment lies concealed in the rocks 
beneath our feet. 
