M ONER A, AND THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 457 



Nor can it account for, or even follow with any degree of precision, the 

 stages of transformation leading from apparent uniformity of structure 

 to diversity of organization. The origin of life, and the conditions 

 which have gradually given rise to organization, are essential evolutional 

 moments, as yet in the twilight of mere fanciful conjecture. Their 

 penetration and elucidation would yield the data for the solution of 

 what may be called the physical phase of the problem of life. 



But, further on, in pursuance of evolutional continuity, we encounter 

 a still deeper mystery, separating most profoundly the world of matter 

 from the world of mind. We are all aware that this strange contrast 

 of matter and thought, of the extended and the inextended, has ever 

 constituted a fundamental dualism in human experience. Philosophy 

 in every one of its aspects is mainly the result of an effort to imagine 

 or to recognize the connection which necessarily must obtain between 

 the ideal and the real. But there has been far too much imagining, 

 and too little recognition, in the endeavor. So, till quite lately, in the 

 history of human thought, but very slight advance was made in the 

 solution of the central puzzle, concerning ideality and reality. Modern 

 Science, disgusted at the waste of so much precious energy and ear- 

 nestness, given up to the elaboration of mere whimsical and visionary 

 interpretations, set out with the positive intention to evade in its inves- 

 tigations any contact with this constant stumbling-block of certitude. 

 But the antagonistic powers of outwardness and inwardness are too 

 intimately blended in Nature to admit of any such artificial severance, 

 however skillfully attempted. 



Scientists are becoming more and more conscious that, even in their 

 least complicated suppositions and inquiries, both those elements of the 

 actual world are always inextricably involved. Before the steadfast 

 glance of Science, the eternal, adamantine atoms, questioned as to the 

 essence of their subsistence and resistance, dissolve into unextended, 

 immaterial centres of force. Before the steadfast glance of Science, the 

 inscrutable forces, with their ideal sweep, traced to the immediate seat 

 of their activity, resolve themselves into the discrete multiplicity and 

 absolute impenetrability of adamantine atoms. Surely, if with witches 

 "fair is foul and foul is fair," with us benighted mortals confusion seems 

 to reign still more supreme, for, to our profoundest thinkers, matter is 

 force and force is matter ; motion somehow is sensation, and sensation 

 somehow motion. And yet how can we aspire ever clearly to compre- 

 hend the fundamental identity of such disparate manifestations as mat- 

 ter and mind ? 



Naturalists are aware of and openly acknowledge this mysterious 

 polarity of phenomena, this double subsistence one in reality and at 

 the same time also in ideality. To the former mode of existence they 

 give the name of motion, the latter they call sensation motion being 

 the generalized fact of outwardness, of objectivity ; sensation being the 

 generalized fact of inwardness, of subjectivity. 



