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Where biological defects of the individual are the cause of dependence, we have just implied that, unless these defects are relatively superficial, the scientific policy for treating these classes of defective individuals would be that of segregation in institutions.
What this involves on the philosophical side does not concern us here, but it is necessary to indicate here the nature of the contact between the two great divisions of science, the mechanical and the biological, considered purely as sciences.
The question to be decided here is whether the biological emphasis is on loudness, or specific distinctness, or pitch, or modulation, or the manner in which the phrases are combined that is, on some qualities in preference to others or whether the emphasis is on the whole.
If it is permissible to arrange natural phenomena in a serial order, we may place them in succession as physical, chemical, biological, and psychological. But these names represent no more than descriptions of certain features that are to the group common, otherwise the grouping would be useless and impossible.
The historical factors that lead to the feeling of national unity are various political, cultural, linguistic, geographic, sometimes specifically religious. True racial factors also may enter in, though the accent on "race" has generally a psychological rather than a strictly biological value.
Throughout the volume one sees the adoption of the broad biological standpoint in mental life. The adoption of the term "biogenetic psychoses" is indicative of the general trend. The adoption of this well-chosen phrase is, I venture to suggest, the product of Dr. Meyer. The reviewer regrets that the papers do not very well lend themselves for brief reviews.
Confessing my complete ignorance of the latter science, I requested him to enlighten me by giving me an instance of a biological principle which could be applied to social regeneration.
Anaximander also noted the importance of rotary or vortex motion in the cosmical scheme, and he inferred that there might be an indefinite number of rotating systems in addition to that with which we are immediately acquainted. He also made some very important observations of a biological character, and he announced that man must be descended from an animal of a different species.
And it is just this superadded relation that requires explanation, as regards its exact biological value and its historic development as well. In undertaking this difficult task, it seems best to begin with the very simplest organisms that biology knows, working upwards through the scale to man.
If we can once thoroughly convince ourselves that race, in its only intelligible, that is biological, sense, is supremely indifferent to the history of languages and cultures, that these are no more directly explainable on the score of race than on that of the laws of physics and chemistry, we shall have gained a viewpoint that allows a certain interest to such mystic slogans as Slavophilism, Anglo-Saxondom, Teutonism, and the Latin genius but that quite refuses to be taken in by any of them.
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