ABSTRACT
THis is simply a frank, and probably rather naive, presentment of the synoptic view which comes to one after forty years and more of biological observation and reflection. It is not a philosophy of biology, which would mainly mean a systematic criticism of such biological categories as organism, development, heredity, and evolution. That has been essayed from different points of view in Driesch's Gifford Lectures (The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, Igo8), Johnstone's Philosophy of Biology, I9I4, and other works ; and it continues to-day, as it must. But the point of this paper is rather to indicate how a discipline in biology, including obviously reflection on its categories or central concepts, colours the synoptic picture one tries to make of all orders of facts. Perhaps one may venture to say, furthermore, that the would-be philosophical view here sketched-sincerity perhaps its chief value-is deeply influenced not merely by experience in biological investigation and reflection, but by an intimate sojourning with Animate Nature. For convictions come in the school of the woods and the shore as well as in the laboratory. Perhaps Huxley would have modified his view of Animate Nature if he had been more of a field-naturalist.
