An Introduction to a Biology 



Why we like fire : the forms of flame are never repeated, 

 i.e. they possess the attribute of life. 



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If you break the bone of your nose so badly that a 

 portion has to be removed, you can obtain a piece of bone 

 from another mammal and have it put in its place. But if 

 you should lose a part of your soul, a much commoner 

 accident, no such operation could be performed. 



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's saying, " Pity poor D has done nothing." 



Have I ? His idea that one must perpetually be publishing to 

 keep oneself in known-ness is like the cinema bridging over 

 gaps between successive moments. It is extension, not depth. 



May 1, 1915. 



To G. HERBERT THRING, Esq., Secretary to the Incorporated 

 Society of Authors. 



DEAR SIR, In reply to your circular of last month 

 with regard to the use of the cinematograph for educational 

 purposes, I write to say that I am strongly opposed to the 

 application of the cinema to the study of life, i.e. to biology. 



The tendency to make the scientific lecture a sort of 

 music-hall entertainment which carries on the interest from 

 one moment to the next by " experiments " and " lantern 

 slides," and what not, at the minimum expenditure of effort 

 on the part of the listener, requires, in my opinion, no fur- 

 ther encouragement. The role of the cinema is to amuse 

 even when it covers amusement with the cloak of " interest,'' 

 and not to stimulate. The cinema encourages the natural 

 tendency of man to seek his pleasures and interest where 

 he has found his instruments, outside rather than within ; 

 but it takes us not into the souls of things, but into an 

 unreal, artificial region " midway between things and our- 

 selves, external to things, external also to ourselves." l 



1 Bergson, " Laughter." Eng. transl., p. 154. 

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