The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams

INTRODUCTION

physiological teaching are the doctrines of dietetic dogmatists, and the prohibitions and injunctions of religious and other regimens. Obscuring the facts of heredity there are heavy accumulations of prejudice and superstition. In the care of his health and the conduct of his life, the ordinary man, therefore, draws far less confidently upon the resources of science than he might do. He is unavoidably ignorant of much that is established and reasonably suspicious of much that he hears. He seems to need the same clearing up and simplifying of the science of life that The Outline of History and its associates and successors have given to the story of the past. And the present work is an attempt to meet that need, to describe life, of which the reader is a part, to tell what is surely known about it, and discuss what is suggested about it, and to draw just as much practical wisdom as possible from the account.

Three writers have joined forces in this

compilation, this précis of biological knowledge. They are all very much of the same mind about the story they have to tell, they have all read and worked upon each other’s contributions, and they are jointly and severally responsible for the entire arrangement and text. The senior member of the firm, so to speak, is Mr. Wells, who wrote The Outline of History, but equally responsible with him are Professor Julian Huxley, the grandson of Mr. Wells’ own inspiring teacher, Professor T. H. Huxley, the great associate of Darwin, and Mr. George Philip Wells, the senior partner’s son. The latter is a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, who refreshes the detailed research he has been doing at Plymouth and London with this excursion into general statement. ‘The senior partner is the least well equipped scientifically. His share has been mainly literary and editorial, and he is responsible for the initiation and organization of the whole scheme. Together this trinity, three in one, constitutes the author of this work.

The reader may like to know something of their procedure in putting it together. After various preliminary discussions they decided that as the first concrete stage they should sketch out something between a syllabus and a table of contents for the projected book. With that as a guide they would be able to preserve a consecutive flow of interest and maintain a just proportion between part and part. They would map out the work before them, and classify and apportion the very great mass of litera-

4

~ Outline of History attempted for

ture and specialist publications they would have to digest. They would also run less risk of omissions, and a squeezing out of important questions, if, with such a sketch to submit, they consulted authorities less concentrated upon the animal biology in which all three of them were mainly educated. Each made his own sketch and then came exchanges and discussions, and a wide search among their friends and interested people for comment and advice. A large part of a year was spent in drawing this outline of an outline, and in the end a system of chapters and sections was achieved, a framework sufficiently stable to carry the whole work. Here and there subsequent alterations, extensions, and additions have been made, arising out of the fact that the writers learnt things they had not known and came to realize values they had apprehended imperfectly, but the broad lines, as they were first drawn, stood the test of all their later reading.

The triplex author claims to be wedded to no creed, associated with no propaganda ; he is telling what he believes to be the truth © about life, so far as it is known now. He is doing exactly what the author of The historyBut no one can get outside himself, and this book, like its predecessor, will surely be saturated with the personality of its writers. The reader has to allow for that, just as a juryman has to allow for the possible bias in the evidence of an expert witness or in the charge of a judge. This book is written with a strenuous effort to be clear, complete, and correct; each member of the trinity has been closely watched by his two associates with these qualities in view. But they cannot escape or even pretend to want to escape from their common preconceptions. The reader of this book will not have made the best use of it, unless, instead of accepting its judgments, he uses them to form his own.

§ 2 What do we Mean by Life ?

We will begin our summary by asking what is meant by life? What are 1 distinctive characteristics ?

Our answer at this early stage must be provisional. All this work is no more than a descriptive contribution to the complete answer. But when an ordinary superficial man speaks of life he has a certain group ot distinctive points in his mind. Firstly, a living thing moves about. It may not be in movement continuously—many living