An Introduction to a Biology 



properties of matter almost invariably carries with 

 it an atrophy of sympathy with the varied manifesta- 

 tions of the spirit. The biologist who believes that 

 a living thing is a machine, naturally feels em- 

 barrassed in the presence of things which he utterly 

 fails to understand ; so he rules them out of court 

 as "sentiment" or "superstition." Life itself, with 

 its component individualities, no two of which are 

 alike ; with its extravagance and its parsimony, its 

 beauty and its ugliness, its utter misery and its 

 bouncing fun ; all this is a disconcerting spectacle to 

 the biologist who comes to it laden with the ready- 

 made moulds, the concepts which he has borrowed 

 from the chemist, the physicist and the mechanist. 

 In the presence of Life does he throw away his moulds 

 and try to understand it ? Not he. He gathers up 

 his moulds, hurries from the uncongenial atmosphere, 

 and retires to that comfortable sanctum, the recesses 

 of his own mind, where he can think how he likes, 

 and use his moulds ; and having bolted the door 

 against all but the purveyors of such moulds, he 

 constructs a theory of life after his own heart, a 

 machine. " Nature," he sg^s, "is a vast and 

 orderly mechanism, the working of which we can, 

 to a large extent, perceive, foresee and manipulate, 

 so as to bring about certain results and avoid others." 

 And he enjoys " that happiness and prosperity which 

 arises from the occurrence of the expected, the non- 

 occurrence of the unexpected and the determination 

 within ever-expanding limits of what shall occur." ^ 



* Sir Ray Lankester's Introduction to " Modern Science and the Illu- 

 sions of Professor Bergson," by Hugh S. R. Elliott, p. x. Longman and 

 Co., 1912. 



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