Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/186

182 cats psychologized. We come here, I imagine, upon what virile truth there is in the "Ding an Sich," the "Thing in Itself." I can not restrain my interest from going where I believe reality, to be. Contrariwise, I can not send it where I believe reality is not. Interest and attention, like natural forces generally, take the direction of least resistance; and the places of greatest belief in reality are those of least resistance for attention. With this psychological basis to go on, illustration will carry us forward more surely and steadily than further argument.

The very heart of that school of biology known as materialistic, or mechanistic, is its effort to interpret living beings by ascribing to invisible substances or bodies, located somewhere within the germ-cells and other cells of the body, reality and essentiality of a sort quite unique as contrasted with the visible substances, and the organisms themselves. Examine the program of this school attentively and you will see that it proposes to "explain" or "express" those parts of animate nature about which we know most, observationally, in terms of those parts about which we know least, observationally. It is undoubtedly a quasi-inductive, semi-mystical program.

The chemical materialist conceives certain compounds, never well-known ones mark you, enzymes for example, to be thus supremely endowed. The biological materialist on the other hand, ascribes this exalted role to imaginary, invisible living bodies hidden deep within the germ and other cells. Biology of the last three decades has bestowed mighty powers upon such bodies under the designation "determinants." Only those familiar with the technical literature of the science during this time can have any notion of the influence these bodies have had. What have been, and what are the effects of such conceptions on biological theory and practise? I mention only a few of these.

Nothing is more characteristic of the biological thought in highest repute to-day than its disposition to look down upon all those kinds of research not aimed at the elements of organisms—at "ultimate problems," as the expression goes. Most of those who labor in the biological vineyard but are not elementalists of some sort, will appreciate what I mean, for they will have personally felt the ban placed upon them by the dominant school. A few years ago one of our best known American zoologists, speaking from a position of national preferment in his science, reviewed comprehensively the present range of zoology, and did not hesitate to pass upon the labors of description and classification of animals as hardly worth while. In other words, he pronounced as not worth doing, the very things which an examination of the nature of the knowledge-getting process shows to be absolutely fundamental steps toward an understanding of living nature.