4 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



It is, however, our duty to examine these discussions 

 critically when they have been made by others, and it is 

 from this point of view that I invite consideration, by 

 working biologists, of M. Bergson's speculations, or at 

 least of so much of them as appeal directly to us. It is, 

 of course, quite impossible to deal with all the philosophy 

 of the " Creative Evolution." Much of it is frankly 

 metaphysical, and it is the tradition of our science to 

 look coldly on such discussions. Bergson has been com- 

 pared by Sir E. Ray Lankester to a man " looking in a 

 dark room for a black cat which isn't there." Now all 

 this sort of criticism is quite beside the mark. Even if 

 we could avoid such metaphysical constructions in 

 biology as the "force of heredity," Mendelian factors," 

 " biophors," " living substance," " determinants," etc., 

 we should not wish to do so. Eor many minds, perhaps 

 to some extent for all, speculation beyond the bounds 

 marked out by the positive results of scientific investiga- 

 tion is unavoidable, and we are impelled towards it 

 whether we will or not. I suggest, then, that we frankly 

 abandon ourselves to this mode of enquiry, and that those 

 of us who like may salve our consciences by premising 

 that however fascinating it may be it is not science. 



Now it is not at all difficult to summarise briefly 

 Bergson's philosophy so far as it concerns us as biologists. 

 It is, however, necessary to take some liberties with his 

 general line of argument which is, in some respects, 

 rather too subtle for easy reproduction in brief. 

 Generally speaking, philosophies of the organism 

 suggested during the last century have been either 

 mechanistic schemes, or such as involve the conception 

 of finalism : that is to say, life and evolution in general 

 have been regarded as the working out of a process which 

 includes only the concepts of physics — matter and 



