An Introduction to a Biology 



affected by it that the course of biological speculation in 

 the near future will be largely determined by that philo- 

 sophy) it behoves us to consider how that philosophy affects 

 biology on its applied side. 



I admit that there is a prima facie justification for the 

 question which must have occurred to many of you : "If 

 biology has only just begun to be touched by this new philo- 

 sophy on one side which we called its eastern frontier, it is 

 not very likely, is it, that the extreme, opposite side of 

 biology — its applied side — will be affected by that philo- 

 sophy already ? " 



But, in point of fact, it happens that the particular 

 department of biology upon which at present most light 

 seems to be at once thrown by Bergson's view of life, is the 

 general significance of the Mendelian phenomena. And, as 

 you are aware, it is the principles deduced from these phe- 

 nomena which have been offered by the biologist to the 

 practical breeder as a key to all, or most of the problems 

 of breeding. And this brings us to the consideration of 

 what I meant by saying that this new philosophy has a 

 bearing on the science of agriculture in a particular way. 



Our next business, therefore, is to consider what are 

 the essential features of Bergson's view of life. Bergson 

 believes that life is, in its essence, a thing which flows, a 

 stream which gathers experience as it flows onwards, ex- 

 perience which in the case of man is never lost but always 

 retained. We carry with us all of our past, and this past 

 is always liable to crop up in our psychic life. A rolling 

 stone gathers no moss. That is because a stone is a lifeless 

 thing. But a living thing whose real life is made up of its 

 experience is like a snowball which is rolled in the snow ; 

 it increases, as it is rolled, with the snow that it gathers,- 

 until it becomes big enough to make a snow man of. This 

 flow of our psychic life is regarded by Bergson as that real 

 time which we live and in which we move and have our 

 being, as opposed to the mathematical time which is a mere 



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