THE WONDER OF LIFE 647 



intuition that surrounds our distinct — that is, intellectual 

 — representation '. According to Bergson it is an invalu- 

 able organon. 



In sympathy, in artistic and poetic feehng, we come near 

 instinct. We speak of the intuitive insight of the ' born 

 doctor ' and the divining sympathy of the mother. Berg- 

 son says that we do well so to speak. ' Instinct is sym- 

 pathy ; if it could extend its object and also reflect upon 

 itself, it would give us the key to vital operations — just as 

 intelligence guides us into matter '. ' By intuition ', he 

 says, ' I mean instinct that has become disinterested, self- 

 conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object, and of 

 enlarging it indefinitely '. It brings us sympathetically 

 into life's own domain, and makes us feel sure once more 

 that Wordsworth, Emerson, Meredith, and other nature- 

 poets are truest, because deepest, biologists of us all. 



In the second place, the plain man wonders why we should 

 worry over such an academic question as the number of 

 the sciences. Vitahst or mechanist — a plague o' both your 

 houses ! — ^will either view make any difference to this life 

 of mine ? This raises large questions, but one answer miist 

 suffice. If the mechanistic theory of the organism be 

 erroneous — a false simplicity or materialism — it behoves 

 us in the love of truth to fight, all the more that those 

 who maintain that biology is only apphed chemistry and 

 physics are of the company of those who say that psycho- 

 logy is a branch of physiology and sociology a pseudo- 

 science. This position may be held with conviction in the 

 name of scientific method and interpretation by men who 

 are as much impressed as any with the fundamental 

 mysteriousness of nature, but it tends with the careless 

 to strengthen the hands of the unpoetic, the unromantic, 



