1368 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



with environment at all its lev^els, material and psychic, and from 

 simplest to highest. As we thus more fully live in such human 

 co-operation, of hearts, hands, and heads in advancing harmony, 

 the Eupsychia, Eutechnia, and Eutopia of Re-Education, so often 

 dreamed by thinking and pioneering teachers, become increasingly 

 realisable goals for progress; oscillant and asymptotic though that 

 may be. 



BIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 



Biological Modes of Thinking Socially Applied: "Duree.' 

 — For an orderly presentment of these, we should need a long 

 chapter, beyond that fundamental parallelism of organic and 

 social life-processes already expressed, and some briefer sugges- 

 tions elsewhere in regard to Time, and "Duree". Particularly sig- 

 nificant from the biological viewpoint, is the importance of time, as 

 of years and seasons, and even months, weeks and days; and also 

 on the larger scale, as with the rings of a tree, which so plainly 

 embody and record its years, and often even seasons, with their 

 vicissitudes; as similarly for the growth of shells, of fish-scales, etc. ; 

 while in the life of higher animals, and of man, of course above 

 all, the curve of life is well marked out into its main periods, 

 as that of human social life by its changing generations. Here, 

 then, conveniently arises, as common to all life, from simplest and 

 briefest to highest and longest, M. Bergson's conception of 

 "Duree" . Wliy is it so difficult to translate this word? Every stone 

 has had long duration, yet no duree-, though in its place, whether 

 in Nature or in the wall we may build it into, it may still endure 

 for indefinite ages. We have thus no English word to convey the 

 idea : why not follow the custom of our language, so open to imports 

 and their adaptation to our needs, and simply say dury? — just as 

 we have already done for jury (pire) and much the same too for fury 

 ifnrie). 



At au}^ rate, let us see clearly what Bergson means by it— or, 

 for bre\'ity's sake, simply use an illustration which has pleased him. 

 Ask then a child in English — How old are you? — and note the 

 answer. — I'm ten past. — And yom- father? — Forty! — Your grand- 

 father? — He's long past seventy. Now the like in French. You 

 ask: "Quel age as-tu?" — "J'ai dix ans et plus." — "Ft ton pere? — 

 "11 a quarante ans." — "Et mon grand-pere a bien plus de soixante- 

 dix ans." The translation seems literal enough. Yet in English we 

 are mainly thinking of astronomical years, past and gone, which we 

 have no longer; whereas in French, we have our years. That is why 

 the child is a child, since it has so few; why the father is a man in 

 his prime of activity, and why the grandfather is richest in experi- 

 ence. The French idiom in fact implies duree; but the English one. 



