Science of life

“ In addition to this, each science, to establish its own truths, needs those of all the sciences anterior to it. The only means, for example, by which the physiological laws of life could have been ascertained, was by distinguishing, among the multifarious and complicated facts of life, the portion which physical and chemical laws cannot account for. ”

“ Again, before we can attack these momentous problems with any reasonable hope of success, we shall need to know which among the categories employed by the various sciences dealing with mental life are of fundamental significance, and what is the logical relation of those sciences to the concrete realities of immediate experience, and to the constructions of physical science. ”

“ But there is another phase quite distinct from the purely utilitarian. Biological science opens up to us the facts of life and solves some of the questions of the greatest interest to mankind. What is life? ”

“ In like manner we may expect to find that the Idea of Life, if indeed that be the governing Idea of the Science which treats of Living Things, will be found to have been gradually approaching towards a distinct and definite form among the physiologists of all ages up to the present day. ”

“ And this science, it will quickly appear, not only contains within it a stable foundation of irrefragable certainty, sufficient for all the wants and requisitions of life, but also opens a wide space for the further exercise and development of all time, thought, and cognition, and the most ample field for all genuine spiritual hopes and pure wishes of a higher nature. ”

“ We should say thus: all knowledge falls into two classes, the physical sciences and the mental sciences. In the circle of physical sciences we have the general sciences, like physics and chemistry, the particular sciences of special objects, like astronomy, geology, mineralogy, biology, and the formal sciences, like mathematics. In the circle of mental sciences we have correspondingly, as a general science, psychology, and as the particular sciences all those special mental and moral sciences which deal with man's inner life, like history or jurisprudence, logic or ethics, and all the rest. ”

“ It is not only in the coarser, practical sense of the word "utility," but in this higher and broader sense, that I measure the value of the study of biology by its utility; and I shall try to point out to you that you will feel the need of some knowledge of biology at a great many turns of this present nineteenth century life of ours. For example, most of us attach great importance to the conception which we entertain of the position of man in this universe and his relation to the rest of nature. ”

“ It is the interaction and resultant of all the forces of Nature, both favourable and unfavourable to life, that determine the development and growth of every individual organism. And so the form and characteristics of every living being depend on the nature and strength of these contending forces. ”

“ Natural science declares the present result of its observation of the universe, investigation brief, superficial, and limited to one small corner of the whole. Yet these deliverances are to be set above the science which deals with existence on the highest plane, the spiritual, solving deepest problems of life and conscience, finding perpetual support in the experience of men. ”

“ But the full meaning of most problems which life-science presents to view is hardly gained by a merely cursory inspection of what may be called the normal side of things. The by-paths of development—more frequently, perhaps, than its beaten tracks—reveal guiding clews and traces of the manner in which the progress in question has come to pass. So, also, the side-avenues of biology open up new phases of, it may be, the main question at issue, and may reveal, as in the present instance, an interesting reverse to the aspects we at first deem of sole and paramount importance. ”

“ We are not thinking of the bread-and-butter phase of life and of the aid afforded by the sciences in making a living, but of the all-round, practical utility of natural science as a necessary supplement to moral training. ”

“ Hence, since such a course is of service to all who take up natural science, I, who devote to the subject my continuous energy and reap the calm enjoyment of a life like this, have prepared for you just such an epitome and manual of the doctrines as a whole. ”

“ Psychology,—the science of the human soul and its relations,— under the mechanistic theory of life, must receive a new definition. It becomes a science of man's activities as determined by the environmental stimuli of his phylogeny and of his ontogeny. ”

“ He will own to you that in the struggle for life which goes on day and night in our thoughts as in the outside world of nature, much that he learned under the name of science has died out, and that simple homely experience has largely taken the place of that scholastic knowledge to which he and perhaps some of his instructors once attached a paramount importance. ”

“ Then, starting from that conception of life as the continuous adjustment of inner relations within the organism to outer relations in the environment—a conception of which he made such brilliant use in his Principles of Biology—he shows how the psychical life gradually becomes specialized in certain classes of adjustments or correspondences, and how the development of psychical life consists in a progressive differentiation and integration of such correspondences. ”

“ Science, to put the matter in other words, has accomplished these three things. Firstly, to use the words of a well-known writer, 'it has established a functional relation to exist between every fact of thinking, willing, or feeling, on the one side, and some molecular change in the body on the other side.' Secondly, it has connected, through countless elusive stages, this organic human body 211with the universal lifeless matter. ”

“ All the phenomena of life,—of the vis vitæ or vitality, are beyond human search. All the physical forces, or elements, we may examine by the test of experiment: but the principle on which sensation depends, the principle even upon which vegetable life depends, cannot be tested. Life is infinitely superior to every physical force ”

“ Again, Physiology, the abstract science, investigates, by such means as are available to it, the general laws of organization and life. Those laws determine what living beings are possible, and maintain the existence and determine the phaenomena of those which actually exist: but they would be equally capable of maintaining in existence plants and animals very different from these. ”

“ It finds place in the subject before us as truly as it does in that science, which one of my able successors will have the honour of illustrating,—the science of the laws of Life—Physiology or Biology. ”

“ The first of these brings to mind what was referred to in a previous chapter, that science is man in his doubt seeking the companionship of nature; and the second will aid us greatly in understanding the attitude and method of science, to which, having the evidence of history, we have next to turn.
We have found the rise of science to imply a general abstraction of the various factors in human [p.070] life, and to be itself, in particular, the abstraction of the consciousness of nature, nature being the totality of the manifest conditions of life. ”

“ Lastly, this definition confounds the Law of Life, or the primary and universal form of vital agency, with the conception, Animals. For the kind, it substitutes the representative of its degrees and modifications. But the first and most important office of science, physical or physiological, is to contemplate the power in kind, abstracted from the degree. ”

“ It is seen as an integral part of Biology, and pursued in the biological spirit. Whether we look to psychology on the one hand, or to anthropology and its associated sciences on the other, the present is a most propitious moment for drawing public attention to this vast science, as being the true centre and foundation of that practical knowledge which is 46 needed as a guide, and also as a stimulus, for practical everyday life. ”

“ Since the main feature of those sciences of which we have now to examine the philosophy is, that they 170 involve the Idea of Life, it would be desirable to have them designated by a name expressive of that circumstance. The word Physiology, by which they have most commonly been described, means the Science of Nature ”

“ To this we may add, that though all the discoveries which have been made with respect to particular functions or organizations are understood to be subordinate to one general science, the Philosophy of Life, yet the principles and doctrines of this science nowhere exist in a shape generally received and assented to among physiologists ”

“ It seems, then, that nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biasses to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for other occupations and entertainments. Indulge your passion for science, says she, but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. ”

“ Living matter is characterised by its innate tendency to exhibit a definite series of the morphological and physiological phenomena which constitute organisation and life. Given a certain range of conditions, and these phenomena remain the same, within narrow limits, for each kind of living thing. ”

“ The mental discipline, the habits of sound and accurate reasoning, the distrust of mere authority and of untested assertions and traditions that science tends to produce, all stimulate the intellectual virtues, and science has done much to rectify the chart of life, pointing out more clearly the true conditions of human well-being and disclosing much baselessness and many errors in the teaching of the past. ”

“ This materialistic conception of life, however, has already become obsolete among the more advanced biologists as a result of the wonderful discoveries of modern science, which are fast bridging the chasm between the material and the spiritual realms of being. ”

“ We must therefore glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious observation of human life, and take them as they appear in the common course of the world, by men's behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures. Where experiments of this kind are judiciously collected and compared, we may hope to establish on them a science which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension. ”

“ A life devoted to science is therefore a happy life, and its happiness is derived from the very best sources that are open to dwellers on this troubled and passionate planet. ”

“ We have seen that science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common-sense rounded out and minutely articulated. ”

“ Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law. ”

“ Man gives neither shape nor comeliness to beauty. Beauty possesses those qualities even before they are perceived by man. Beauty is a thing of Life, that has dwelt forever in the Eternal Mind. Nature reflects the charms of His goodness in form, outline, coloring. Love paints the petal with myriad hues, glances in the warm sunbeam, arches the cloud with the bow of beauty, blazons the night with heaven's gems, and covers the earth with bright and living characters.
Beauty, as well as Truth, is eternal; but the beauty of material things passes away, fading and fleeting as mortal belief. ”

“ The measurement of Life, by solar years, robs youth and gives ugliness to age. The rising sun of virtue and Truth marks the morning of being. Its manhood is the eternal noon, undimmed by a declining sun. When a personal and material sense of beauty fades, the radiance of Spirit should dawn upon the enraptured sense with brighter glories.
Love never loses sight of beauty. Its halo rests upon its object. One marvels that a friend can ever seem less than beautiful. Man and woman, of riper years and larger lessons, are growing in beauty and immortality, in stead of lapsing into age and ugliness. ”

“ To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without—our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from the flood of water in summer heat. What is the whole physical life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which science gives their names? But these elements, phosphorus and lime and delicate fibres, are present not in the human body alone: ”

“ For complete science, however, we need the aid of every special science,—of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Physiology, Anatomy, Psychology, and all the other branches which can contribute to any side of our knowledge of nature. ”

“ It seems, indeed, as if nature had, in this instance, admitted an exception to the will by which she has ordained the perpetual accumulation of knowledge among civilized men, and had destined a considerable portion of science continually to grow up and perish with individuals. ”

“ Biology, too, includes within its range the study of man himself, so far as one side of his nature is concerned; and, as regards his mental and moral qualities, the psychologist and sociologist have already begun to recognize that the progress of their sciences is closely bound up with the development of certain branches of biology. As regards its practical value I might set forth at length the indebtedness of scientific medicine and of sanitary science to biology ”

“ The science of Mind explains cause and effect, lifts the veil of mystery from Soul and body, reveals the scientific relation of God to man, unwinds the interlaced ambiguities of being, sets free the imprisoned thought, and explains the divine Principle of man and of the universe. ”