PREFACE
AS,
after long observation
and careful
study,
the biologist
sees that
what
at first seemed
isolated and arbitrary
acts
are
really
part
of
a
series
of
regular
changes,
and
presently has the
life-history
of the being that he
is examin-
ing
clear
from Alpha
to
Omega
in
his
mind ;
as, during
a
battle,
the
relative importance of its various incidents is lost,
the
more
so owing
to
the
excitement
and
activity
of
the
combatant,
and
to the fact that
he is himself involved
in the
vicissitudes which he may have set himself to observe ; while
even for the commander, though the smoke-pall may lift now
and again to show some brilliant
charge
or desperate
hand-to-
hand
struggle,
he
may
fail
to
grasp
its
significance
in
his
dispositions
;
or indeed find
it
to
be quite unexpected
and
foreign
to his calculations ; yet
a few
years
or months later
the
same
battle
may
be
lucidly,
tersely,
and
connectedly
described, so that a child is able to follow its varying fortunes
with delight and comprehension
: just so has my own observa-
tion of a life-history
more
subtle,
a battle
more
terrible, been
at
last
co-ordinated
:
I
can
view
the
long
struggle
from
a
B
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