An Introduction to a Biology 



habits of a particular animal or plant. With re- 

 gard to this latter meaning of the word, let it be 

 noted that it applies to the behaviour of any animal 

 except man himself. With regard to the former, 

 the most common meaning of the word, the reader 

 may object that biology, dealing as it does with the 

 comparative anatomy, development, evolution, and 

 many other aspects of animals and plants, so far 

 from dealing with a restricted set of phenomena, 

 ranges over the whole field. There are no other 

 living things than animals and plants ; the study of 

 animals and plants is the province of biology ; there- 

 fore biology covers the whole field of life. 



The answer to this argument is that the biologist 

 in his efforts to survey the whole field has forgotten 

 one animal, himself. In this way he has committed 

 himself by long habit to the study of those living 

 things of which his knowledge must perforce be 

 external, and has shut himself off from the study 

 of the one living thing which he could know in- 

 timately. He has preferred to " cover the whole 

 field " rather than to dig in the spot where, in my 

 belief, the return for cultivation would have been 

 greatest. The course taken by the biologist may 

 be illustrated by the difference between a recent 

 and an early meaning of the verb " to manure." 

 In one of its original, literal, and etymological 

 significations it meant to work the soil with the 

 hand (that is to say, with the spade, which is an 

 extended, detachable part of the hand) ; but the 

 meaning gradually shifted outwards from the pro- 

 cess itself to the fertilising effect which the process 

 had upon the soil ; and thence it spread to the 



