1232 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



busy as practitioners to keep up with its advances. As to the social 

 sciences, these have still the greatest difficulty in getting a hearing 

 at all; save as regards history for church and law, and economics 

 for the industrial world ; and neither of these in adequately sociolo- 

 gical form. The various social evils indeed cry out to all the profes- 

 sions; yet they are only beginning to obtain scientific treatment; 

 as notably public ill-health, and mental troubles, from wide-minded 

 medical leaders ; while most even of these have difficulty in getting 

 further, to enter on those fuller studies of cities and their regions, 

 with their occupations and population conditions, which afford the 

 best concrete introductions to social science. 



Hence the more integrated education, which opens windows and 

 doors to Nature and to Civilisation, is still but in its beginnings; 

 and to accelerate this advance in concrete details on one hand, and 

 to broad general outline on the other — and on all levels, primary, 

 secondary and higher and, of course for both sexes, as well as all 

 occupations and professions, from simplest to highest, is urgently 

 needed; alike to abate present evils, difficulties and conflicts, and 

 to advance progress of all kinds. 



Since as social beings we are ever interacting with our environ- 

 ment, and thus mainly in its immediate circles of home and friends, 

 of neighbours in region and city, with their familiar range of ideas, 

 our normal laughter is mainly on these simpler life-levels, which 

 all can widely share, as in childhood and growth, to adolescence, 

 and to love. Hence too it is that the more developed and indivi- 

 dualised humour of different cities, regions, peoples, and tongues, 

 is not easily or always translatable, save where it ranges to keenest 

 or deepest, and thus anew widens its appeal. As again that of tim.es 

 of social transition; yet even of Aristophanes or Rabelais, of Eras- 

 mus and More, how much now is lost, or all but irrecoverable? Of 

 vulgarised laughter, however contagious — that of mere giggle in 

 gabble, in gobble or guzzle — we need not here speak, though 

 Rabelais and others have often hid their deeper humour under it. 

 So here again must we not return to the ever-pioneering Bergson, 

 with his keen and detached insight, reinforced by his vision of 

 evolution beyond our mechanical age and its correspondingly 

 prosaic thought, and towards life more abundant, more free and 

 varied, more happy and joyous accordingly. Yet combative, too: 

 for such life in its evolution has no easy task for survival, no small 

 difficulty of extrication from our mechanised Industrial Age, and 

 into that opening Life-evolutionary phase, which we may thus 

 claim, and hail, as the Revivance. Here then is the paramount value 

 and significance of Bergson's humour — his vision of richer humour 

 and fuller laughter opening before us, on one side of ridicule of 

 every subordination of life to mechanism, and on the other of joy, 

 as life anew emerges to mastery. 



