An Introduction to a Biology 



not true. If for old acquaintance' sake we wish to retain 

 the saying in some form we may say that there is nothing 

 new in the sun, where the conditions for the existence of 

 life do not obtain. 



There is a third feature in which life differs from un- 

 organised, i.e. non-living matter, according to M. Bergson, 

 namely that in the performances of living things there is an 

 uncertainty which is such that these performances cannot 

 be predicted mathematically. Here is a feature in which 

 life differs profoundly from unorganised bodies, the move- 

 ments and behaviour of which can be predicted with 

 mathematical precision. 



We now come to the fourth and last aspect of Bergson's 

 view of life to which I wish to draw your attention. I have 

 already said that the history of biology in the nineteenth 

 century is the history of the attempt to explain the phe- 

 nomena of life in terms of chemistry, physics, and mechanics. 

 And you must already have gathered from the whole tenour 

 of what I have said that I agree with Bergson in thinking 

 that this attempt will not be successful. I believe that the 

 living thing is something far more than a highly complex 

 machine filled with a lot of chemicals. How, then, you will 

 ask me, do you account for the great measure of success 

 which has attended the application of chemical, physical, 

 and mechanical principles to the solution of biological 

 problems ? The answer I would give is as follows. I do 

 not for a moment deny that the problem, which confronts 

 the organism, of the getting rid of waste products, or of the 

 secretion of pigment, or the manufacture of bone, is in part 

 a chemical problem, or that the mechanism of the control 

 of the temperature of the organism is a problem which can 

 be expressed in physical terms, or that the child draws in 

 its mother's milk by mechanical means. But I do not believe 

 that the soul is nothing more than a conveniently brief 

 term for the sum-total of the activities of the nervous 

 system. Surely it is the other way round ; the nervous 



