142 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



of that vapour have predicted the state of the 

 fauna in Great Britain in 1888 with as much 

 certitude as we say what will happen to the vapour 

 of our breath on a cold day in winter." 



This very strong and confident statement 

 appears to us to illustrate the need for philo- 

 sophical criticism. As Bergson points out, it 

 denies that time really counts; it also denies 

 that organisms are more than mechanisms. It 

 denies the creative individuality of the organism, 

 which trades with time in an unpredictable 

 way all its own. It may be right in these denials, 

 but the points are arguable. Moreover, the gen- 

 eral idea of evolution does not warrant us in sup- 

 posing that intelligent behaviour, for instance, 

 "reposed potentially in the cosmic vapour" and 

 could be predicted from a "knowledge of the 

 properties of the molecules of that vapour"; for 

 molecules and the like are abstractions of physical 

 science which, for the purposes of that science, 

 may be treated as if they represented the whole of 

 the reality. The "primitive nebulosity of the 

 universe" was a reality which, for the purposes 

 of physical science, would be analysable into a 

 whirling sea of molecules, but that certainly can- 

 not have been the whole truth about it if in it 

 there reposed potentially the present actual world. 

 To take an analogy from development, there is no 

 reason to believe that we should have exhausted 



