Difference between living and non-living nature.—The “End” (aim, object, purpose, goal) and the “Whole” as biological fictions.—“The End determines the Means”, and “the Whole determines the Parts”

Of all the branches of learning which make up the science of zoology, that of Animal Psychology appears to me personally to be the highest. Anyone who has worked through all the various departments of zoology, through the study of various animal forms, through morphology, embryology, theory of descent, comparative physiology, and all the rest of the many branches, should, I think, find at last in Animal Psychology the most important teaching of all, and one of particular value as regards a deeper view of man and his place in Nature. My object in this book is to introduce the reader to the chief problems of Animal Psychology—or more cautiously speaking, those problems which appear to me personally as outstanding, and of most immediate interest.