ABSTRACT
All the immense amount of study of animal life is of value chiefly in so far as it throws light indirectly upon the nature of man. If there were nothing in common between the animals and ourselves, if all their activities were of an order radically different from ours, natural history might be a fascinating hobby and even, in a limited way, a practically useful study. It is because we feel, however obscurely, the affinity between the animals and ourselves, the fundamental unity of all life, that all biological studies have a profound interest which the physical sciences cannot rival, even though we gape at the stories of immense numbers and magnitudes which they unfold. What do we profit from increased knowledge and control of the physical world, if we do not understand our own nature, its modes of activity and its possibilities, if we know not how to control our own actions, how to promote the intellectual life, how to mould the characters of our children, how to ennoble and beautify the race? Without increase of such knowledge, the progress of physical science will but serve to make us more efficient in blasting one another to fragments, and will send the whole race hurtling more speedily to perdition.
