An Introduction to a Biology 



has not done, is not suited to the investigation of 

 extra-human vital processes. In the first place the 

 problems in the two cases are totally different. 

 The function of the court of law is simply to find out 

 what a man has done ; and, so far from its being 

 the case that the court is concerned with discovering 

 the cause of the prisoner's action, the fact is that a 

 pretty confident and usually justified visualisation of 

 his motives, i.e. the cause of his probable action, by 

 the jury, is used only as a means of finding out what 

 he did. But the task of the biologist is not to find 

 out whether a particular animal or plant did or did 

 not, on a certain occasion, do a certain thing. The 

 non-possession by non -human animals and plants of 

 a speech intelligible to man makes it impossible for 

 them to lie to us. And, of course, in point of fact, 

 we do know a vast amount about the actions of plants 

 and animals, especially man. For we cannot lie to 

 ourselves about our own actions, though we may 

 about our motives. The task of the biologist is to 

 interpret, to find a meaning in those actions of living 

 things that he knows about ; or, to put it so that it 

 embraces the whole domain of life, to explain such 

 manifestations of life as fall within his ken. The 

 application of the method of the court of law to this 

 task seems to me to be one of the most flagrant 

 examples of the use of tools designed for specific 

 practical requirements in the wild-goose chase after 

 truth. 



Let us now pass straight on to the third category, 

 that of the physicist and chemist, and leave the 

 biologist out, for reasons which will appear shortly. 

 It is held by M. Bergson, and I agree with his conclu- 



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