An Introduction to a Biology 



to perceive that what is interesting to itself is not neces- 

 saril}^ interesting to other minds. And when you come to 

 consider the kind of things in which a man becomes deeply- 

 interested, you will reahse that the very fact of their being 

 interesting to him is the reason of their being uninteresting 

 to others. For the only things which can beget a real interest 

 in a man are new things, especially things for whose bringing 

 to light he is responsible. 



The fact that we are responsible for the bringing to light 

 of these new things — our discoveries, our intellectual offspring 

 — accounts for our own absorbing interest in them and for 

 the belief that others take a similar interest ; and makes us 

 try to go further into them and find out everything about 

 them in the most detailed manner possible. The more we 

 do this the more does each new little thing we find out swell 

 in importance in our eyes, until at last we enter a state in 

 which we can see nothing but this new thing ; and even if 

 we do not get so far as to beheve that nothing else exists, we 

 at any rate very soon come to think that it is more important 

 than anything else. The modern scientific belief that the 

 world is much as we see it, and is not peopled by hosts of 

 spirits, is not without its disadvantages. For if we begin 

 by saying that the world is what we see, we may end by 

 coming to believe that what we see is the world. And if we 

 are not careful we may ultimately lose the power of detach- 

 ing ourselves from the little world we have created around 

 the thing which we have discovered, and of viewing it with 

 the same degree of magnification as that with which others 

 look at it. So it often comes about that a man chooses as 

 a topic some minute point with which he has himself been 

 engaged, and that he is apt to conclude from the fact that 

 he is absorbed in it that it will be interesting to his hearers. 



I shall therefore try to escape from the possibihty of tiring 

 you in this way, by not talking about any experiments which 

 I have been making. And I propose to invite your attention 

 to a topic which deeply concerns every student of nature. 



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