An Introduction to a Biology 



We could not go far wrong, but we could not go far. 

 No. Let us not play the poltroon's part. Let us 

 locate the dangers and know them so that we may 

 guard against them. Besides, Life challenges us to 

 interpret her. Our best chance of understanding 

 life is to study life in movement, that is to say, in 

 evolution. In our next chapter we shall glance at 

 the evolution of man with a view to finding out what 

 habits of mind he has contracted. Having done 

 this we shall be in a better position to answer the 

 question whether the theory of life, especially the 

 explanation of evolution by natural selection, which 

 constitutes the orthodox biology of the present day, 

 is acceptable to man solely because that theory has 

 been cast in the mould of his habits of thinking ; 

 and whether this theory is not, in fact, so remote 

 from life as it really is as scarcely to bear any rela- 

 tion to it at all. 



43 



