Evolution / by Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson.

  • Patrick Geddes
Date:
[1911?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    213/264 (page 209)
    ing physical and chemical, structural and functional inquiries onwards to new triumphs of analysis; but also, from the other side, that of tracing the psychic process deeper and deeper, into the very germs and origins of life. In a word, then, it is for the mechanistic biologist to cease from scoffing at the vitalist as a “ mere mystic,” and to set about master¬ ing psychology until he can turn scientific clearness upon his vagueness. Till then he but lays himself open to a counter-sneer from the mystic, and a worse nickname—that of “ necrologist.” Initiation into Psychology.—How is the biologist, trained in the dissecting-room, the laboratory, the museum, the herbarium, or even in the garden or the field, to get at the psychological point of view, even when he begins to feel that he here has something to learn, that he in fact requires it, if he is to be a biologist indeed ? Even in Bergson, much more in the German vitalists, there is too much of the intangible. Let him begin with Darwin himself, and he may soon feel, that like many an admiring disciple before now, he has not grasped the fully rounded thought of his own master. With rare exceptions, like Lloyd Morgan for instance, what natural¬ ist of us all is not far more at home with