TOWARDS A THEORY OF LIFE 1415 



of discussion ; or biologically applied, as to the plotting out of variations, 

 whether arising from mingled heredity, or from other causes. 



Further use indeed is to make Hegel himself more clear to his readers 

 (if not even than he was to himself) . Take what seems the most triumph- 

 ant case of his synthetic reconciliation of the antithetic couple which 

 before him seemed absolute and irreconcilable, viz. that of Being and 

 Not-Being. For does not common sense seem uncompromisingly to 

 insist on one or other — for hoyv can anything be, and yet not be, at 

 once? Yet the solution comes, as simply as with Columbus' egg — for 

 Hegel's answer is — Becoming! Yet this Becoming may be towards 

 Being, as with the child and youth, not yet man; or with the old Man 

 at his maturest, yet all the further on his way to Not-Being. To the 

 historian, well as the biographer, to the embryologist and evolutionist, 

 these different directions of Becoming are obviously essential. So, 

 instead of so many words, why not write: 



BEING 



Becoming 



Becoming 



NOT-BEING 



This method will be found suggestive in stating and thinking over 

 other biological problems. Thus, male and female (M and F) : 



fM 



suggests 



M mF 



M 



i.e. masculoid females (say crowing hens), as mF, and feminoid males 

 (say capons) as fM. We might adapt this method to the origin of 

 species, at least in certain cases to begin with, as for feminoid and 

 masculoid species, e.g. bee and wasp, sheep and goat. 



FACTORS OF PSYCHIC AROUSAL, NUTRITIVE AND 

 REPRODUCTIVE. — It is a main value of any diagram that its 

 bareness suggests further inquiry. Recall, then, that feeling, 

 alike in animal and man, is not simply aroused from the ordinary 

 life-maintaining inorganic conditions of its environment, but by 

 its clamant organic needs; and these, fundamentally and most 

 of the time, are of self-maintaining character, of nutrition, for 

 growth or adult maintenance. Yet are not these surpassed, and 

 more and more, as we ascend the organic scale from simplest 

 to highest, by the ever intenser and more stressing urge of 

 species-continuance; in a word, of reproduction, and thus in- 

 creasingly, up to and with the evolution of sex. With the full 

 development of this urge, the individual attains organic maturity 

 and commonly ends its growth: correspondingly such psychical 

 development as it may attain matures also: and both unite in 

 recurrent reproductive urge, raising life on its psychic side to high 

 and higher intensity of feeling, despite the consequences, of tem- 

 porary or even final exhaustion of the body. In such psychic develop- 



