18 Professor Gregg Wilson on 



thing new. This view is intended to explain how we carry with 

 us all of our past, and how this past is always liable to crop up 

 in our psychic life. Like the Weismaiinic view, this of Bergson's 

 recognises that the past remains present to us ; but it gives to the 

 living organism an effective power to modify and shape. 



In conclusion, I should like to say tliat it seems to me that 

 we are still far from clear vision in the realm of evolution. We 

 can only as yet get partial views, and much of our argument is 

 by vague simile. But I believe that for practical purposes it is 

 wise still to accept a kind of dualism in the organic world. We 

 seem to have failed completely to make things plain by mechan- 

 istic monism, and the ordinary citizen gets lost in the maze of 

 the metaphysical monism advocated by Haldane and others. We 

 can safely say that while there is much in the organism that can 

 be weighed and measured, and is fully and satisfactorily explained 

 as mechanism, there is also much that cannot be so explained, 

 and that may be regarded as outside space, and as distinctive of 

 life. 



Such a conclusion does not suggest that the role of natural 

 selection is abolished, but rather indicates that natural selection 

 is not " all sufficient." Instead of playing the part of creator, 

 it may be regarded as active in pruning away the unfit — a far 

 from unimportant task. 



And the effect of adopting the definite dualistic view need 

 not be, as not a few have suggested, the end of all scientific 

 inquiry. On the contrary, it may be that this view will add 

 zest to the pursuit of knowledge. Darbishire found it so, as we 

 gather from his description of the effect of his reading Butler's 

 work. "We read 'Life and Habit,'" he says, "in 1909. We 

 had been brought up in the school of Natural Selection ; our 

 lectures on Evolution began with Charles Darwin. Evolution as 

 explained by natural selection was a drab thing, in which we had 

 to believe. The change wrought in us by reading ' Life and 

 Habit ' was miraculous. An extraordinary change had also come 

 over the living things we saw. They appeared as they had 



