The foundations of zoölogy / by William Keith Brooks.

Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The foundations of zoölogy / by William Keith Brooks. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    tion of man. The patch was cut off from the rest by a wall. . . . In short, it was made into a garden. ... It will be admitted that the garden is as much a work of art or artifice as anything that can be mentioned. The energy localized in certain human bodies, directed by similarly localized intellects, has produced a collocation of other material bodies which could not be brought about in a state of nature. The same proposition is true of all the works of man’s hands, from a flint implement to a cathedral or a chronom- eter : and it is because it is true that we call these things arti- ficial, term them works of art or artifice, by way of distinguishing them from the products of the cosmic process, working outside man, which we call nature, or works of nature. The distinction thus drawn between the works of nature and those of man is universally recognized, and it is, as I conceive, both useful and justifiable.” I trust that the thoughtful reader will perceive that the legiti- mate pursuit of this line of reflection leads straight back to the Aristotelian statement, in the essay of 1854 (III. ii. 40), that “to the student of life [as contrasted with the student of physics] the aspect of nature is reversed. Here incessant and, so far as we know, spontaneous change is the rule; rest the exception — the anomaly to be accounted for. Living things have no inertia and tend to no equilibrium.” Many biologists find their greatest triumph in the doctrine that the living body is a “mere machine”; but a machine is a colloca- tion of matter and energy working for an end, not a spinning toy; and when the living machine is compared to the products of human art, the legitimate deduction is that it is not merely a spinning eddy in a stream of dead matter and mechanical energy, but a little garden in the physical wilderness; that the energy localized in living bodies, directed by similarly localized vitality, has pro- duced a collocation of other material bodies which could not be brought about in a state of physical nature, and that the distinc- tion thus drawn between the works of non-vital nature and those of life is both useful and justifiable. What this distinction may mean in ultimate analysis I know no more than Aristotle or Huxley ; nor do I believe that any one ever will know until we find out. One thing we may be sure it
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