An Introduction to a Biology 



sion, that the intellect of man has been developed as 

 a by-product, nay indeed is little more than a product 

 of the process of utilisation and control of matter by 

 man.i And whether we incline to the view that this 

 development has been the invention of a conception 

 of matter to fit the rigid features of the mind, or to 

 the view that it has been the modelling of our at 

 first plastic manner of thinking to suit the hard 

 crust of matter ; in a word, whether liquid matter has 

 been poured into and cast in the mould of mind, or 

 liquid mind has been poured into and cast in the 

 mould of matter ; to whichever of these views we 

 incline, we believe that the mind thinks in terms of 

 matter, and that a theory of any manifestation of 

 matter which fits that manifestation closely will be 

 acceptable to and intelligible by man, simply because 

 matter has been moulded on mind, or mind on 

 matter. And therefore to the engineer, the chemist 

 and physicist and other occupants of the third 

 category, my thesis that a theory which fits the 

 facts at all closely will be unintelligible to the mind, 

 will be nonsensical. My thesis will be rightly con- 

 sidered untrue by these men because they are dealing 

 with matter, by means of an instrument, the intellect, 

 designed for the purely practical purpose of dealing 

 with matter ; and by the lawyer because he is dealing 

 with certain phases of human activity by a mechanism, 

 the court of law, designed for that very purpose. 

 The lawyer is fitting human mind to human mind. 

 The physicist and chemist are fitting human mind 

 to matter, upon which the human mind has been 

 moulded. So, of course, to both these classes the 



1 Bergson, " Evolution Creatrice." 

 39 



