Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/526

522 All the general laws of life which apply to animals and plants apply also to man. This is no mere logical inference from the doctrine of evolution, but a fact which has been established by countless observations and experiments. The essential oneness of all life gives a direct human interest to all living things. If "the proper study of mankind is man," the proper study of man is the lower organisms in which life processes are reduced to their simplest terms, and where alone they may be subjected to conditions of rigid experimentation. Upon this fundamental likeness in the life processes of man and other animals is based the wonderful work in experimental medicine, which may be counted among the greatest of all the achievements of science.

The experimental study of heredity, development and evolution in forms of life below man must certainly increase our knowledge of and our control over these processes in the human race. If human heredity, development and evolution may be controlled to even a slight extent, we may expect that sooner or later the human race will be changed for the better. At least no other scheme of social betterment and race improvement can compare for thoroughness, permanency of effect, and certainty of results, with that which attempts to change the natures of men and to establish in the blood the qualities which are desired. We hear much nowadays about man's control over nature, though in no single instance has man ever changed any law or principle of nature. What man can do is to put himself into such relations to natural phenomena that he may profit by them, and all that can be done toward the improvement of the human race is to consciously apply to man those great principles of development and evolution which have been operating unknown to man through all the ages.

One of the greatest and most far-reaching themes which has ever occupied the minds of men is the problem of development. Whether it be the development of an animal from an egg, of a race or species from a preexisting one, or of the body, mind and institutions of man, this problem is everywhere much the same in fundamental principles, and knowledge gained in one of these fields must be of value in each of the others. Ontogeny and phylogeny are not wholly distinct phenomena, but are only two aspects of the one general process of organic development. The evolution of races and of species is sufficiently rare and unfamiliar to attract much attention and serious thought; while the development of an individual is a phenomenon of such universal occurrence that it is taken as a matter of course by most people—something so evident that it seems to require no explanation; but familiarity with the fact of development does not remove the mystery which lies back of it, though it may make plain many of the processes concerned. The development of a human being, of a personality, from a germ cell is the