Elements of Physical Biology

Now this method has its advantages and disadvantages. One feels an unpleasant suspicion that if Smith and Jones, instead of driving a mutually selfish bargain, instead of working in a measure against each other, could be brought to combine their forces in the definite purpose of serving the community, the latter would collect, not only a residual tax, but a more complete benefit. In the simple example of the loaf and the steak this is hardly apparent, but there can be little doubt that in human affairs much is lost by internal friction, by men pulling this way and that, instead of pulling together.

The other disadvantage is that this method of division of labor frequently must fail to satisfy those working instincts which man still possesses, useless as they may appear in the circumstances. Now unsatisfied instincts are painful things. But this method, in spite of such disadvantages as it may have, has established itself very firmly among us. It must possess fundamental advantages. And it is not difficult to point out where these enter into the scheme of things. The tasks of the beehive, the anthill, are comparatively simple and few. Two, three, perhaps four sets of instincts serve the required ends. But to quote Veblen,” “the higher the degree of intelligence and the larger the available body of knowledge current in any given community, . . . . the

more complicated will be the apparatus of expedients and resources employed to compass those ends that are instinctively worth while.” So, in our own community, the list of different gainful occupations takes up over ten closely printed pages of the Statistical Abstracts of the United States. A behavior schedule of such complexity as this can hardly be taken care of by an assortment of as many instinctive proclivities. What is happening today is that the instinct of workmanship, so far as it plays a part in the working day of mankind, is sufficiently broad and plastic to adapt itself, with reasonable success, to a variety of tasks. Misfits there are, and some degree of heartache in consequence. But perfect adaptation is found in no department of life, neither can we expect it here.

Espérons dans ces étres inconcevables qui sortiront de l’homme, comme Vhomme est sorti de la brute.—Anatole France. The Life Struggle in the Modern Community. It is not wholly from partiality, nor from self-complacency alone, that we are led to view the evolution of man, and especially of modern man, with a peculiar interest. An impartial judge, if such could be produced, would doubtless concede to the‘human species, as it stands today, an unique and predominant position in the scheme of Nature. For, civilized man has achieved the distinction of practically clearing the board of all foes of a stature in any way comparable with his own. This has resulted for him in a very special form of the struggle for existence. With the conflict against other species relegated to the background, man’s combat with his own kind has been forced to the center of the stage. Increasing population pressure and continued success in the control of disease can only add to this effect, which is furthermore enhanced, while the struggle is at the same time forced into a very particular mold, by the industrial régime which has bonded the body politic into one organic whole. Under this régime we enter the battle of life en bloc. The activities of any one single individual are as a rule wholly incompetent to keep him or anyone else alive. The product of a day’s work of a stenographer, for example, is a pile of papers covered with black marks. Taken out of its setting this is an entirely useless product, totally unfit to support the life of the producer. And much the same is true of the work of the bookkeeper, the draftsman, even the skilled engineer or chemist. The race as a whole, indeed, still contends with external opposing forces. But the individual, in a large proportion of cases, is conscious only of competition with his fellows.

This competition takes the form of an intricate system of bargains to purchase the least intolerable form of dependence that the individual can secure, or to achieve such approach to independence as may be had. Whoever fails entirely in this struggle is Nature’s convicted delinquent, the unfit, unable to draw to himself the needful share of the necessities of life, out of the general fund from which the body politic as a whole is supplied. A new and characteristic form of the struggle for existence thus arises, the trend and presumptive outcome of which is for us a matter of evident interest.

Organization of Motive Lags behind Industrial Organization. While the human species, as a mechanical going concern, has become organized into a social whole, the motivation that keeps it going has not undergone the same thoroughgoing organization, but continues to be in great measure individualistic in type. Social ends are achieved through appeal to individualistic instincts. Our present industrial system operates by way of the mutually selfish bargain, in which each party to the transaction seeks his own advantage, regardless of the gain or loss to society as a whole. The system works tolerably well, beyond reasonable expectation perhaps; at least so it seems to those accustomed to the system. The competitive element which it introduces is not without salutory action. But, making proper allowance for this, one is left to ponder whether there may not, in due course, be evolved a superior system, that shall secure the interests of the community more directly, and with less loss by internal friction in the social machinery. There are certain difficulties in the way of achieving this in man by those instinctive methods which operate effectively in insect societies, as has already been pointed out. Human activities are too multifarious to permit of simple adjustment by a stereotyped set of instinctive proclivities that predestine each infant at birth for his own particular sphere of activity through life. Nevertheless, we are not left wholly without encouragement that the future evolution of our race may proceed in a direction that shall ultimately ease the conflict between man and man, and between man and the world at large.

Philosophy as a Necessary Part of Scientific Enquiry. We have already had occasion to refer to the importance of attaining a clear realization of the nature of our fundamental assumptions. The scientific investigator has, in the past, not given to this phase, the philosophic phase, of human enquiry, the attention which it sooner or later must demand as a necessary condition of unimpeded progress. For if we define philosophy as the critical examination of the funda-

mental data of experience, it is seen that philosophy is not something apart from science, but must form an integral and essential part of every science. No science can be said to have reached the adult stage until critical examination of its fundamental concepts has at least begun. Classification of the Sciences in Relation to Self and External World. Of all fundamental assumptions in our thinking there is probably none so basic, so all pervading, as that of the division of the universe (that is to say, of the totality of experience) into an ego and a non-ego, a self and an external world, a knower and the known, an observer and a thing observed, a subject and an object, mind and matter ;—all of these pairs of terms are, as commonly employed, more or less close synonyms.

Both unsophisticated thought and scientific thought accepts this division as axiomatic, and the physical sciences propose to study the external world, while psychology proposes to study mind, or the ego. Philosophy does not accept this division as axiomatic, but proposes, among other things, to inquire into the nature and significance of the distinction. The philosopher asks: What is ego, and what is non-ego? Where is the line drawn, and how do I come by this distinction? Thus philosophy studies the relations between the ego and the non-ego.2 According to the point of view that has been here

1 This definition contains animplicit assumption, namely, that there are fundamental data of experience. This is not necessarily true. It may be that, no matter how far the analysis be carried, the data arrived at as the most fundamental can always be resolved by further analysis into others more fundamental. Thus the characteristic feature of philosophic enquiry, which distinguishes it from scientific enquiry, is perhaps rather one of direction than one of result. While science builds up from axiomatic data, philosophy works from these axiomatic data downward in the opposite direction. This is the view proposed by Bertrand Russell in his work Our Knowledge of the External World.

2 This statement evidently holds true quite independently of the reality or objective existence of the ego and the non-ego or external world. Disputes as to such objective existence seem rather pointless. The fundamental data of our experience are sense impressions. When certain relations obtain between certain sense impressions, we ascribe the latter to an external object. Thus, if I see a cat, and proceed to go through certain movements which I speak of as stroking the cat, I may presently have the sensation of soft fur against my hand, and a purring noise at my ear. In that case I say that the cat is real, Or, going through the same motions, I may feel the impact of my hand against

presented the ego is not a concrete thing, but is of the nature of a system of reference, in relation to which experience is described, somewhat as the geographical location of a city is defined in terms of longitude and latitude. Just as longitude may be reckoned from the meridian of Paris or from that of Greenwich or from any other convenient datum circle, so experience is describable with reference to a number of different egos. The relation between the ego and the external object is brought out with great clarity by Bertrand Russell in his Analysis of Mind (1921, p. 100), after this manner: Sets of photographs of the stars might be made, first by taking all kinds of views, in different directions, from one point in space. The collection thus brought together would give the appearance of different stars in a certain place, or, as we may say, would be a catalogue of the world of stars as it appears from a certain center of perspective. But another collection might be made by photographing the same star from all kinds of different points in space. This collection would give us all the ap-

a hard surface, etc. In that case I say that the supposed cat is merely the image, in a mirror, of a cat. Fundamentally the so-called real cat is merely a convenient hypothetical construct, convenient because it greatly simplifies language and thought. It would be possible to express in terms of sense impressions alone everything that is ordinarily expressed in terms of an external world. For that very reason it is quite impossible to prove that this external world has a real or objective existence, or, for the matter of that, that it has not. That the external world is a hypothetical construct is not ordinarily realised, because that construct is formed by an instinctive and unconscious process, so far as ordinary experience is concerned. In extraordinary circumstances, that call for the exercise of intense conscious reflection, the hypothetical nature of the construct is immediately apparent, as for example in the case of the Bohr atom, or the Einstein space-time continuum. But at bottom the real cat is just as hypothetical as the theoretical Bohr atom, although perhaps less subject to revision as to its precise description.

If we continue to employ the terms external world, object, etc., this must not be taken to imply that we are oblivious of the hypothetical character of these constructs, but only that we resort to the usual expedient, for the sake of grammatical simplicity. No harm will result from this use of the conventional terminology so long as we bear in mind its character, and do not allow ourselves to be drawn into the discussion of pseudo-problems arising out of that terminology and not out of the fundamental facts. Thus, for instance, to enquire whether mind has an objective existence is a question based on a misconception, not only of the term mind, but of the general character of all the data of our knowledge.

pearances of a certain star in different places, or, as we may say, they would be a catalogue of the different aspects of one object.? The essential difference between the ego and the non-ego is, in this sense, merely a difference in the system of filing, so to speak, a collection of data. Arranged as a collection of observations from one perspective, they are the experiences of an ego. Arranged as a collection of aspects of the world from different perspectives, they are, in their totality, the appearances of the external world.

This double system of filing or cataloguing our experiences is responsible for certain of the divisions of science. This is indicated diagrammatically in the chart table 36, which exhibits, for example, the position of the Physical Sciences, in the general scheme of human enquiries, as the study of the external world, or of that set of data which by common consent we ascribe to an external world; certain other data we associate more particularly with the self, whom we regard as equipped with a body, and gifted with consciousness. This twofold aspect of the self gives rise to a corresponding twofold development of the science of living beings. Biology, with its branches, studies more particularly the body of the organism, while Psychology busies itself with the phenomena of consciousness, as such. The relation of consciousness to the prevailing state of the body is perhaps to be regarded as par excellence the sphere of study of Psychophysics.

With regard to the present and past the Self is a Knower. With regard to the future he is a Willer. That is to say, he has direct cognizance of certain past and present events through sensation and memory; he has direct cognizance of certain future events through his will. In accordance with this twofold aspect of the Self, psychol- 4 Indirectly, i.e., by inference, he may have other knowledge regarding past, present and future. But as to direct knowledge the statement made above applies. It is very commonly overlooked that we have knowledge of the future through our will. This oversight is partly due to the fact that we sense this kind of future in a particular way, unlike our sensing of the past and present. It is partly also due to the masking of this kind of knowledge of the future through uncertainties surrounding the actual realization of our intentions. Upon reflection it will be found not unnatural that there should be an appearance of fundamental distinction between our knowledge of the past through memory, and our knowledge of the future through will. For, if for

ogy may be regarded as divided into two main branches, dealing respectively with the Self as a Knower and with the Self as a Willer. Some of the principal subdivisions of these two main branches are indicated on the chart. Thus the first branch comprises first of all the study of the avenues by which we enter into possession of knowledge, i.e., the study of the special senses, including both the natural senses, and their artificial auxiliaries; furthermore the general theory “of knowledge (Epistemology, Erkenntnisstheorie, Scientific Methodology); and the sciences of thought, both autistic and realistic or logical.

The second major branch is shown as divided into Dynamic Psychology or Psychology of Motivation (including, for example, the study of instincts); Esthetics and the Theory of Values; and Ethics. brevity we may be allowed to speak in the customary terms of unsophisticated speech, we are, through memory, cognizant of the past state of the external world, in so far as there are effects (engrams) in our bodies of those past states; whereas, conversely, we are, through will cognizant of the future state of the external world, in so far as there are causes in us of those future states. This consciousness of causes within us of certain future (external) states, is just what we call will. Will is our subjective realization of what to an objective observer would appear as (physical) causes of the events ‘‘willed.’’? Bertrand Russell’s provisional definition of memory as ‘‘that way of knowing about the past, which has no analogue in our knowledge of the future,’’ seems, in this light, unwarranted (Analysis of Mind, 1923, p. 165). We have here only one particular phase of the double-aspect theory of consciousness that has been noted in Chapter XXXI. From this point of view the question that is sometimes raised, as to whether our sense of willing (free will), our desires, are illusions, logical constructs, fictions, or the like (see B. Russell, Analysis of Mind,1923, p. 32) seems pointless. The question whether we strike a man because we are angry, or whether as William James has put it, we are angry because we strike aman, seems to fall into this category. There are certain conditions in us that are tending to bring about, and that presently do bring about, the blow. Our own particular way of sensing these conditions is that which we express by saying that we entertain the emotion of anger, that we have forethought and intent to hit the man. From this ‘‘double-aspect’’ point of view there seems no room for any essential conflict between the standpoint taken, for example, by Bertrand Russell (Analysis of Mind, pp.

32, 280) that desires like forces are fictitious; and, on the other hand, the standpoint taken of the present writer, in Science Progress, January, 1924, pp. 417, 418, that forces, like desires, may, after all, not be purely fictitious. They may be the subjective, i.e., immediate or directly sensed aspect of certain states that can also become topics of objective, i.e., indirect observation. (S1Ll0q4sstuy UU y I Spre [SIOHALTY [8In}eN suryuryy eSpeyMouy Jo £1004}) ____ = a1d0'T o4styny ASojousysidy AZojoyoAsd asuag L om als. > J soTUOUo0N (spoursur ‘uo14BA enjea jo A100q J, -1y0ur Jo ABZoy;oyoAsd) sola sorqzouysH AdopoyoAsd ormmeudg

This chart is not of course put forward as in any sense complete, but rather as suggestive of a natural classification, and as setting forth certain relations of somewhat fundamental character. The feature in this chart that chiefly interests us in our present considerations is that division of the topics which arises from the twofold aspect of the Self, the Knower and the Willer. Fundamentally the world of knowledge and the world of will, of desire, are wholly apart, as we have already had occasion to observe. Logic has nothing whatever to do with motives as such, though it may, of course, busy itself with the consequences of motives. Contrariwise, motives are in themselves unrelated to or independent of knowledge. The knowledge that if I cross the street at this moment I shall be killed or maimed does not in itself determine my action nor even my intent; this depends on my emotional bias, whether I am bent on suicide, or desirous of maintaining as nearly as possible a pleasant existence.

Nevertheless a connection is established between knowledge and will, though the fact that the Knower and the Willer are united in one physical body, so that physical reactions do occur between knowing and willing. That the recognition of a truth is attended with an emotional affect we well know, not only from our own experience, but also from the fervid expression of some of the great pioneers of science. So Kepler, upon completion of the evidence establishing his third law of planetary motion, exclaims jubilantly: “Nothing holds me; I will indulge in my sacred fury.” Or we may recall the words of Poincaré:

Science puts us in constant relation with something greater than ourselves; it presents to us a spectacle always renewed and always more vast. Behind what it shows us so grand it makes us divine something still more grand; this spectacle is a joy for us, but it is a joy in which we forget ourselves, and this is morally healthful. Quotations exhibiting this spirit, this connection in men’s minds between the contemplation of the intellect and the affections of the emotional sphere, could be multiplied almost without limit.

What result may we, then, expect to flow in the emotional sphere, from that phenomenal expansion of man’s intellectual horizon which modern science has brought, and the still greater revelations that are undoubtdly yet to come? Men have gained much knowledge, but as yet they have scarcely had time to realize what they know, and the grandeur of the new truths. It is not enough to know; there must be a vivid imagination presenting to the mind’s eye for contemplation at once the many facets of the glittering gem. When men shall have learned not only to know but to appraise the esthetic value of their knowledge, when they shall be filled with the glory of it all, surely a new era must dawn for the poetic arts. Wordsworth says:

Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned © expression which is in the countenance of all Science. . . . . If the time should ever come when what is now called Science . . . . shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man. It is, presumably, with such thoughts as this, that he writes in his Prelude The song would speak Of that interminable building reared By observation of affinities In objects where no brotherhood exists To passive minds

And Renan, in L’ Avenir de la Science, shows similar sentiment: Disons donc sans crainte que, si le merveilleux de la fiction a pu jusqu’ici sembler nécéssaire a la poésie, le merveilleux de la nature, quand il sera devoilé dans toute sa splendeur, constituera une poésie mille fois plus sublime, une poésie qui sera la realité méme, qui sera a la fois science et poésie. We may well ask: If the simple Hebraic myth was competent to inspire a Haydn to compose an Oratorio of the Creation, what tone poem shall adequately celebrate the new meaning, in the mind of the modern astronomer, of the words

The Heavens declare the Glory of God The Wonders of His power proclaims the firmament. Thus we are not left wholly without indication as to what may be the fundamental trend of the future evolution of our race. That the evolution of our intellectual capital is subject to a certain particular kind of orthogenesis we have observed in an earlier chapter. The esthetic reaction of the new knowledge upon the race should bring with it a corresponding quasi-orthogenetic development in the sphere of esthetics, and through its mediation, also in the closely allied sphere of ethics. ‘When souls reach a certain clearness of perception, they accept a knowledge and motive above selfishness.”” We have noted elsewhere that, physically, no clear line of division can be drawn between the body and the environment. Psychologically too, we saw that the ego is not something that divides the world into separate fields, but is rather of the nature of a standard of reference in terms of which we find it most convenient to describe experience. But our system of coordinate reference frames, from a good servant, has threatened to become a bad master. As Keyser remarks, we have “estranged and objectified the world, and lost the sense that we are of it.’”’ It is as if evolution had overshot the mark, as if the race must in some degree retrace its step, and regain something of that impersonal consciousness that now seems to be only the occasional property of a few, who, like Wordsworth, are at times ‘unable to think of external things as having external existence, and who commune with all that they see as something not apart from, but inherent in their own immaterial nature.’’> Perhaps this transfiguration cannot be achieved but by the race passing through some great purging cataclysm, out of which a remnant may evolve toward a higher goal. It is familiar fact in geology that the species which pass on the stock to later eras of evolution are commonly not the main branches nor the most highly developed members of the evolutionary tree.

So, also, it may not be the descendants of the now dominant divisions of our species that shall carry on the torch to light the new era, when “the world shall no longer be beheld as an alien thing, beheld by eyes that are not its own.’® But this uncertainty cannot be allowed to deter us in such efforts as we may see fit to make to further by our own initiative the progress of the species, according ‘Compare E. Mach, Die Analyse der Empfindungen, 1903, p. 24; ‘An einem heiteren Sommertage im Freien erschien mir einmal die Welt sammt meinem Ich als eine zusammenhiingende Masse von Empfindungen, nur im

Ich stirker zusammenhiingend.’’ Also Emerson: “ . . . the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, but one with them . . . . We first share the life by which things exist, and afterward see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause,”’ to our best lights. It is not the least of our privileges that there seem to have been given into our hands the means whereby we may in a measure ourselves influence and control the fate and future of our species. It must be admitted that the fraction of the population is small that recognizes or cares anything about this great and golden opportunity for man to have a significant voice in the shaping of the world’s destiny. But history has given us cause to be optimistic as to the possibilities of achievement by a small minority of perfervid men. “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” In our own day we have seen this principle only too effective in various propaganda not of the most desirable type. If men respond thus readily to guidance of very doubtful competence, those better qualified have at least no prima facie grounds for despairing utterly of establishing a body of followers. If enlightened men refuse to exert their influence toward the guidance of affairs according to their best knowledge, they certainly have no right to complain when they see the crowds following after leaders less hesitant, if also less competent. Even sheep have a bellwether. Leadership does not necessarily require intelligence of a high type. To say that the populace does not want the highest type of leader is beside the point. The populace does not pick its leader; it is the leader that picks the populace. However, the writer does not mean to suggest that the man of science, should at the present epoch, proffer his services as a leader in spiritual affairs. His reluctance to do anything of this kind is wholly to be commended.

But it would seem that the time is ripe for scientific men at least to consider some degree of concerted action, some degree of systematic communion among those who continue to feel a proper interest in the ethical issue, now that the mythological trappings with which this issue is commonly encumbered, have been fairly effectively relegated to the background in well appointed minds. Such concerted action seems needful, not so much for the virtue of that strength which is in union, as on account of that weakness which is the failing of the isolated individual: