248 The Reconstruction of 
imagination of botanists of the doctrine of descent, lias no valid 
claim to the dominating position which, especially in this country, 
it has so long held. 
It would be out of place in this memorandum to discuss in any 
detail the schools of pure botany that should be available to the 
student who has taken the elementary course and wants to go on 
with the subject. Broadly speaking, there would be three lines of 
natural development, two of them with broad outlets on practical 
life. First the more generalised pursuit of plant physiology and 
ecology, which would centre in the study of plant life and its relations 
to environment; secondly, the specialised biochemistry and bio¬ 
physics of plants; and thirdly, advanced morphology, including so- 
called “ systematic botany.” The first would naturally lead, on the 
practical side, to agriculture and land utilisation in the widest sense, 
the second to the numberless detailed problems concerned with the 
physico-chemical reactions of plants and plant substances in 
agriculture and in industry. In each the student should have, 
according to his individual aptitudes and inclinations, an opportunity 
of entering upon research, either on the purely theoretical or on the 
practical applied side. From the one he might, if he chose the latter 
course, go on to a school of agriculture or forestry, from the other 
he might go to a technological institute or take a research post in 
an industrial undertaking. In any case he would have had a training 
which would fit him better than any training now available for 
turning his powers and knowledge to good practical use. 
The establishment of a firm connexion with practical life is 
regarded as absolutely vital to the scheme, and this for two reasons. 
In the first place, broad outlets on practical life are essential if we 
are to tap the human material without which botany will never 
develop its full strength. Secondly, and even more important, if 
that be possible, the human mind is so constituted that in the great 
majority of cases intellectual activity divorced from practical life 
tends to what is called “ t academicism,” whose characteristic vices 
are formalism, pedantry, and hair-splitting. It is true, of course, 
that the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge and without 
reference to practical utility is one of the functions in which the 
human mind may rise to its greatest height. But only minds of 
the finest and rarest quality are capable of prolonged activity 
of this sort without falling into the vices of academicism. The human 
mind, like the human organism as a whole, is primarily and funda¬ 
mentally a mechanism for getting things done, not for abstract 
