9° 



THE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF BIOLOGY 



(30), has adopted the neo-mechanistic 

 position, which is all the more surprising 

 in that his former works could accurately 

 be described as a "skilful blend of Driesch 

 and Bergson." But now he says "It is 

 a plain and very obvious fact that we have 

 built up our societies and social relation- 

 ships on the basis of quite irrational 

 recognitions of life in other things than 

 ourselves, and it is very curious that we 

 should refuse to consider this experience 

 as part of that which can be explained in 

 physical terms. Yet it is quite certain 

 that biology will never abandon its 

 mechanistic attitude. The latter is some- 

 thing more than merely an hypothesis, 

 it is a demand or an ideal of explanation 

 which we insist upon in our investigation 

 of life activity." It is, in a word, one of 

 the fundamental ways in which we think, 

 and its apriority is something which we 

 cannot possibly get behind. "Mathe- 

 matics, mechanics, and materialism," as 

 R. G. Collingwood puts it, "are the three 

 marks of all science, a triad of which none 

 can be separated from the others, since in 



fact they all follow from the original 

 act by which the scientific consciousness 

 comes into being, namely, the assertion 

 of the abstract concept." But science is 

 not the only activity of the human 

 spirit. 



There is indeed all the difference in the 

 world between pushing mechanistic ex- 

 planation as far as it will go with the 

 realization that it will go all the way but 

 will not entirely satisfy you when you 

 have got there, and diluting it with other 

 (qualitative) sorts of explanation, in the 

 hope that the mixture will afford you full 

 satisfaction. It is this latter process 

 that is being given up in biology. Scien- 

 tific explanation and philosophical ex- 

 planation are two distinct foods of the 

 soul, and they are confused only at great 

 peril. Or, in the words of an immortal 

 limerick due to Charles Inge, 



"There was an old fellow of Crediton, 

 Who took pate-de-fois-gras and spread it on 



A chocolate biscuit 



Exclaiming 'I'll risk it!' 

 His tomb gives the date that he said it on." 



LIST OF LITERATURE 



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Oxford, 1916. 



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(10) Davidge and Hutchinson. Technical Elec- 



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Organism. 191X, 2, p. xox. 



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19x6. 



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(17) Guye, C. E. Arch, des Sci. Phys. et Nat., 19x0. 



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(xo) . The New Physiology. 1919. 



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