Xll 



Preface 



The three greatest influences over his mind and 

 thought were Beethoven, Samuel Butler, and Berg- 

 son. They had in common two things that he could 

 not do without : humour, and the sense that the 

 source of life is spirit. Their influence was the 

 quickening influence of one personality on another, 

 and they were a constant stimulus to him in his 

 later speculations, which became increasingly meta- 

 physical in character. He chafed against the ortho- 

 doxy of science, and his cherished desire was to 

 make a contribution towards biology in the strict 

 meaning of the term. The whole field of life should 

 be its sphere, he thought ; its basis should be philo- 

 sophical and its method dispassionately critical ; 

 and finally, the spirit in which the biologist ap- 

 proaches his subject should be the same spirit of 

 intense interest combined with humility, with which 

 a lover of music hears a symphony of Beethoven, 

 or a lover of life meets one of the transcendent 

 experiences of life itself. 



In character he was essentially childlike ; gener- 

 ous to a fault, with no arrogance, no malice and 

 no meanness. He had a genius for absurdity, and 

 he used it, as he used his other gifts, with the 

 delight of a child and the skill and thoroughness of 

 an artist. He never made enemies, and he had an 

 infinite capacity for making friends. The men who 

 helped him with his experiments, his laboratory 

 assistants, his gardener, the farmer at Fairslacks 

 were all to him fellow- workers and friends, to whom 

 he delighted to express his gratitude, and with whom 

 he shared, as far as he could, his jests, his interests, 

 and his ideas. 



