An Introduction to a Biology 



This argument will probably be uninteresting or 

 meaningless to those who are not accustomed to 

 fitting theory to fact ; and nonsensical to those who 

 are so accustomed. Men who are commonly engaged 

 in the task of making theories to explain things 

 may be classified into three categories according as 

 the things to be explained relate to (1) man ; (2) 

 living things other than man ; (3) not-living things. 

 The first category is occupied chiefly by the criminal 

 lawyer, the second by the biologist, the third by 

 the engineer, the physicist, the chemist, and so 

 forth. 



That the lawyer would think it nonsense would be 

 proof of its truth. The lawyer's business is to fit 

 a thing which is entirely human mind, i.e. his theory, 

 to another thing which is also human mind, namely 

 the actions of a particular man or woman. If his 

 theory fitted exactly it would be the exact cast of 

 which the mould was the action of the prisoner ; 

 and so would be immediately acceptable to and 

 intelligible to the mind. (If the reader is inclined to 

 find fault with my metaphor and point out that the 

 cast is not similar to, but the opposite of the mould, 

 I would refer to the well known optical illusion which 

 consists in our inability to say whether a given 

 arrangement of graded light and shadow is a mould 

 or a cast, unless we already know, or have strong 

 reasons for guessing, beforehand, which of the two 

 it is.) 



I cannot help thinking that the method of the 

 court of law, with its weighing of evidence and so 

 forth, whilst admirably adapted for the work of 

 finding out what a particular woman or man has or 



37 



