4 i8 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



no exception to the law of conservation of energy. It is found 

 by actual experiment that the quantity of energy emanating 

 from the organism is precisely equal to that absorbed into the 

 organism mainly in the form of chemical energy in the food. 

 The organism as a whole is proved to be a machine for the 

 transformation of energy, in which the food is the fuel. 



The argument of the mechanist is based, therefore, mainly 

 on the fact that spiritual intervention is a factor unknown to 

 science. The universe consists of a sum-total of matter and 

 energy undergoing redistribution in conformity with unalterable 

 laws. The organism is wholly subordinate to those laws, in 

 respect of all those functions which are capable of experimental 

 investigation. But organic functions, and especially cerebral 

 functions, with which mental processes are specially bound up, 

 are exceedingly complex by nature, and many of them have not 

 yet been brought within the range of experimental investiga- 

 tion. The mechanist does not doubt that, when they are so 

 subjected, they will be found to conform to the same uniformities 

 of sequence that characterise every other class of known 

 phenomena. Summing up his point of view, the mechanist 

 insists that in the past there has been an unconquerable 

 tendency to ascribe to spiritual initiative all classes of events 

 the causes of which were wholly obscure ; that the invasion of 

 materialist explanations has always been triumphant ; that at 

 length the spiritual initiative is no longer invoked in the 

 inorganic world, but is confined to the more inaccessible class 

 of organic events; that in every instance where the rising 

 physiology has investigated organic events — as for instance in 

 reflex action, or in energy output — the materialist explanations 

 have been triumphantly established ; that the spiritual agency 

 which was invoked for explaining reflex action, etc., has given 

 way only in quite recent years, only when confronted with a 

 certainty, and then with a very bad grace ; that spiritualistic 

 initiative has now been driven to entrench in its final strong- 

 hold, namely those immensely complex cerebral processes which 

 are not yet amenable to experimental methods. Thus, argues 

 the mechanist, if, in view of the two conflicting systems of 

 nature, one has in every battle from the beginning of history to 

 the present time invariably been successful, while the other has 

 invariably been defeated, if the materialistic system has now as 

 as a result entered into possession of the whole inorganic world, 



