BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1369 



though, of course, not excluding that idea, manifest on reflection 

 to every mind, does not so simply and adequately express it. So we 

 may think of M. Bergson as a French child, though the first one 

 fully to realise this advantage of his language, and clearly to express 

 it. Like the tree, and far more fully, we have our years, with their 

 accumulation of organic growth and change, and of psj^chic experi- 

 ence and development; while the stone can but endure external 

 changes of its environment, or weather away from these, but lacks 

 that true registration we can but call dury. In social life we com- 

 monly speak of this as History, but the better term is that of social 

 Heritage: and hence we value it; as materially from laboured soil 

 and spreading trees to well-kept home and treasured heirlooms, and 

 so on to monumental cities. Yet as fully can we appreciate our less 

 materially embodied heritage, as of language, literature, and music, 

 of family, local, regional, and civic tradition, of institutions of all 

 kinds, with their distinctive values. Throughout these vast heritages 

 of all kinds, there are few or none wholly without elements which 

 have (or may) become burdens, sometimes even evils, needing 

 elimination — say oftener replacement, appropriate to present or 

 opening needs. It is thus profitable to consider individual develop- 

 ment and human evolution alike in terms of Dury. 



Biological Changes Paralleled in History and Institu- 

 tions. — For the history of peoples and civilisations the idea of 

 growth, maturity, decline, and even death, is one of the most 

 familiar and well-worn ones; yet under active discussion again 

 to-day, since Spengler's Decline of the West, even to its down-going 

 as he literally threatens. But avoiding this vast and dubious dis- 

 cussion for less extreme social changes, we shall take here but a 

 single and simple biological illustration, that of the beautiful 

 "Peruvian lily" (say, rather, amaryllid), with its leaves sharply 

 turned over at their bases, and re-adapted accordingly, so that 

 what was the normal upper surface, has not only acquired the 

 general aspect, but the functional stomata of all ordinar}^ leaves. 

 Correspondingly, the former under-surface, now the upper one, has 

 fully acquired the aspect and character of that of ordinary leaves. 

 The adaptation of original structure to functional change, so fre- 

 quent throughout Nature, is thus presented here in the simplest 

 diagrammatic way. 



So what simpler and clearer illustration can we desire than this, 

 to bring out the frequent analogous contrasts which arise in human 

 societies between things as they were, and even commonly are, and 

 things as they change ? The original under-surface, still manifest at 

 the base of the leaf, is, for the morphologist, clearly still the under 

 surface, no matter how turned over; or even were it twisted into a 

 screw (as some Croton leaves are!). His case is clear, at once "Legiti- 

 mist" in history, and unanswerable in strict law. Yet the way of 



