Biology / by Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson.

  • Patrick Geddes
Date:
[1925]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biology / by Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    is a bustle in the air we breathe : in the not-living as well as in the living, we study what Bacon called “ the secret movements of things.” Is it then merely that the dance of particles is more intricate in living crea¬ tures, that they move to a different tune? Or is there something more ? Here we must pass by the question, to be faced in a later chapter, how we can steer between a metaphysical Scylla and a material¬ istic Charybdis. Scylla has still many heads, of which 44 entelechy,” “ vital force ” and “ elan vital ” are three. Charybdis is still voracious, in reducing to a lowest common denominator everything that she can suck into her whirlpool. Which is to be most avoided—using a metaphysical label, a mere 44 x ” to tie up the uniquenesses of life—or caricaturing the organism as an ingenious penny-in-the-slot machine, with an inter¬ mittent safety-valve whistle, called mind ? This question must be faced further on; meanwhile our steering must follow a course between the two dangers—a course that will keep the broad features of Nature clearly in view. To vary the metaphor, our picture of the characteristics of living creatures must be a large landscape with clear foreground, yet with distant horizon. This must come first, though later on we may find some satis¬ faction in Herbert Spencer’s often emended definition of life as 44 the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, co-ordinated into corre-
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