Every student of living things knows that to understand the structure, habits, instincts, of any creature is to feel for and with it. Even the lowliest type of organism acquires dignity and worth when one becomes familiar with its life. Children in their ignorance and lack of understanding are incredibly cruel. So, likewise, are nations. The treatment of inferior by superior races throughout the ages has been childishly cruel, unjust, stupid, inimical to the best interests not only of the victims, but also of mankind. This has been so, not so much by reason of bad intentions, although selfishness has been at the root of immeasurable injustice, but primarily because of the utter lack of understanding and sympathy. To see a savage is to despise or fear him, to know him intimately is to love him. The same law holds of social groups, be they families, tribes, nations or races. They can cooperate on terms of friendly helpfulness just in the measure in which they know one another's physical, mental and social traits and appreciate their values, for in precisely this measure are they capable of understanding and sympathizing with one another's ideals.
Selfishness, the essential condition of individualism and nationalism, must be supplanted by the sympathy of an all inclusive social consciousness and conscience if lasting peace is to be attained.
To further the end of this transformation of man we should become familiar with the inborn springs to action, those fundamental tendencies which we call instincts, for we live more largely than is generally supposed by instinct and less by reason. All of the organic cravings, hungers, needs, should be thoroughly understood so that they may be effectively used. And, finally, the laws of intellect must be at our command if we are to meet the endlessly varying and puzzling situations of life profitably and with the measure of adequacy our reason would seem to justify.
Clearly, then, the least, and the most, we can do in the interest of peace is to provide for the study of life, but especially for the shamefully neglected or imperfectly described phenomena of behavior and mind, in the measure which our national wealth, our intelligence and our technical skill make possible. For one thing, it is open to us to establish institutes for the thorough study of every aspect of behavior and mind in relation to structure and environment, comparable with such institutions for social progress as the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. The primary function of such centers for the solution of vital problems should be the comparative study, from the genetic, developmental, historical, point of view of every aspect of the functional life of living things, to the end that human life may be better understood and more successfully controlled. Facts of heredity, of behavior, of mind, of social relations, should alike be gathered and related, and thus by the observation of the most varied types, developmental stages, and conditions of living creatures there should be developed a science of behavior and consciousness which should ultimately constitute a safe basis for the social sciences, for all forms of social endeavor, and for universal and permanent peace.
I submit that such centers of research as the psycho-biological institute I have so imperfectly described are sorely needed. For it is obvious that the future of our species depends in large measure upon how we develop the biological sciences and what use we make of our knowledge. I further submit, and therewith I rest my case, that familiarity with living things breeds sympathy not contempt, and that sympathy in turn conditions justice.
May it be granted us to work intelligently, effectively, tirelessly for world-wide peace and service. not by the suppression of racial and national diversities, the leveling of the mass to a deadly sameness, but through steadily increasing appreciation of racial and national traits. May the world, even sooner than we dare to hope, be ruled by sympathy instead of by fear.
THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE
THE MISSOURI AND THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDENS
THE Missouri Botanical Garden has recently celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of its foundation and the New York Botanical Garden its twentieth anniversary. Within these short periods these gardens have taken rank among the leading scientific institutions of the world. Botanical gardens were among the first institutions to be established for scientific research; indeed Parkinson, the "botanist royal" of England, on the title page of his book of 1629, which we here reproduce, depicts the Garden of Eden as the first botanical garden and one which apparently engaged in scientific expeditions, for it includes plants which must have been collected in America. However this may be, publicly supported gardens for the cultivation of plants of economic and esthetic value existed in Egypt, Assyria, China and Mexico and beginning in the medieval period had a large development in Europe there being at the beginning of the seventeenth century botanical gardens devoted to research in Bologna, Montpellier, Leyden, Paris, Upsala and elsewhere. An interesting survey of the history of botanical gardens is given in a paper by Dr. A W. Hill assistant director of the Kew Gardens, prepared for the celebration of the Missouri Garden, from which we have taken the illustration from Parkinson and the pictures of Padua and Kew.
The papers presented at the celebration have been published in a handsome volume. It includes addresses by a number of distinguished botanists, though owing to the war several of the foreign botanists were unable to be present. Dr. George T. Moore, director of the garden, made in his address of welcome a brief statement in regard to its origin in the private garden and by the later endowment of Mr. Henry Shaw. Mr. Shaw came to this country from England in 1818, and with a small stock of hardware began business in one room which also served as bedroom and kitchen. Within twenty years he had acquired a fortune and retired from active business to devote the remaining forty-nine years of his life to travel and to the management of a garden surrounding his country-home on the outskirts of St. Louis. In 1859 he erected a small museum and library, and in 1866 Mr. James Gurney was brought to this country as head gardener. Mr. Shaw died in 1889, leaving his estate largely for the establishment of the Missouri Botanical Garden, but providing also for the Henry Shaw School of Botany of Washington University and a park for the city. With this liberal endowment constantly increasing as the real estate becomes more productive, Dr. William Trelease, the first director, and Dr. George T. Moore, the present director, have conducted an institution not only of value to the city of St. Louis but largely contributing to the advance of botanical science.