The lecture began with a small attempt to say what little I know of Bion. I named three of his most important contributions to psychoanalysis and interspersed commentary on various things, of which his war experience was prominent, and the use to which he put his own, as he felt it, profound ignorance. Some comment was made on his search for knowledge, by acute observation, philosophy and mathematics. Melanie Klein provided him with a new framework: what Freud did for the theory of neurosis Bion did for the theory of psychosis. Application was made to the neonate, and an attempt made to solve an acute problem left by Bion on the relationship between alpha- and beta-elements. Finally an application was made to the patient's knowledge of dying. Basic to his development was his war-time experience.