terest to us. The reasons are not far to seek. Most scientific
investigators are forced by circumstances to work with organisms which
are readily obtained and easily kept. The primates have neither of these
advantages, for many, if not most of them, are expensive to get and
either difficult or expensive to keep in good condition. Clearly, then,
our ignorance is due not to lack of appreciation of the scientific value
of primate research but instead to its difficultness and costliness.
Strangely enough, the practical importance of knowledge of the primates
has seldom been dwelt upon even by those biologists who are especially
interested in it. It is, therefore, appropriate to emphasize the
strictly human value of the work for which I am seeking provision.
During the past few years it has been abundantly and convincingly
demonstrated that knowledge of other organisms may aid directly in the
solution of many of the problems of experimental medicine, of
physiology, genetics, psychology, sociology, and economics. In the light
of these results, it is obviously desirable that all studies of
infrahuman organisms, but especially those of the various primates,
should be made to contribute to the solution of our human problems.
To me it seems that thoroughgoing knowledge of the lives of the
infrahuman primates would inevitably make for human betterment. Through
the science of genetics, as advanced by experimental studies of the
monkeys and anthropoid apes, practical eugenic procedures should be more
safely based and our ability to predict organic phenomena greatly
increased. Similarly, intensive knowledge of the diseases of the other
primates in their relations to human diseases should contribute
importantly to human welfare. And finally, our careful studies of the
fundamental instincts, forms of habit formation, and social relations in
the monkeys and apes should lead to radical improvements in our
educational methods as well as in other forms of social service.
Along theoretical lines, no less than practical, systematic research
with the primates should rapidly justify itself, for upon its results
must rest the most significant historical or genetic biological
descriptions. It is beyond doubt that genetic psychology can best be
advanced to-day by such work, and what is obviously true of this science
is not less true of all the biological sciences which take account of
the developmental or genetic relations of their events.
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