An Introduction to a Biology 



Released from the close application of tlie very- 

 struggle for life, in which a mistake meant certain 

 disaster, the mind, with its vastly increased range, 

 would be directed towards the beginnings and the 

 ends of things. But as a mind, hitherto focused 

 upon the close hard work of existence, could know 

 nothing about either, it would have no difficulty 

 in inventing a consistent theory^ of the origin and 

 fate of all things — a perfect circle dinted at no 

 point by contact with reality. Pufied up by his 

 victory over the elements and the brutes, man had 

 no conception of his intellectual limitations. For- 

 getting that he acquired the long range of his in- 

 tellectual vision by the handling of inanimate objects, 

 he had the temerity to apply it to the interpretation 

 and even the origin of life. He forgot that his 

 mind, now on holiday, although emancipated from 

 service to the hand, still had deeply ingrained in 

 it the habits acquired during its long servitude. 

 Thus he thought of life, and the Universe too, as 

 having been created by a God, just as his own 

 tools, weapons and utensils were created by him- 

 self. That he really thought that God was both 

 in form and habit merely a very powerful man, 

 and had created the universe in exactly the 

 same way as a man fashions a pot, is shown 

 by the fact that he explained his own origin by 

 saying that this God created him after His own 

 (God's) image. 



This view of the origin of life in all its forms, 

 including man, was satisfying to man for many 

 years, because it was in harmony with his habits 

 of mind and was not contradicted by what he knew 



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