35° The Study of Animal Life app. i 



through what is for us the supreme reality — ourselves — mind. And 

 as in our brain activity we know matter and energy as thought, I 

 have adopted throughout this book what may be called a monistic 

 philosophy. 



Having recognised the central position of Biology among the 

 other sciences, we have still to inquire what its task precisely is. 



Our scientific data are (l) the impressions which we gather 

 through our senses about living creatures, and (2) the deductions 

 which we directly draw in regard to these. Our scientific aim 

 is to arrange these data so that we may have a mental picture of 

 the life around us, so that we may be better able to understand 

 what that life is, and how it has come to be what it seems to be. 

 Pursuing what are called scientific methods, we try to make the 

 world of life and our life as organisms as intelligible as possible. 

 We seek to remove obscurities of perception, to make the world 

 translucent, to make a working thought-model of the world. 



But we are apt to forget how ignorant we are about the realities 

 themselves, for all the time we are dealing not with reaUties, but 

 with impressions of realities, and with inferences from these im- 

 pressions. On the other hand, we are apt to forget that our deep 

 desire is not merely to know, but to enjoy the world, that the heart 

 of things is not so much known by the man as it is felt by the child. 



