458 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



beg, therefore, to inform him that the mind is not a coherer : and 

 I pass on to the next book. 



In his work Involution, Lord Ernest Hamilton takes "a 

 glimpse" at the "cosmic process." That glimpse discloses to 

 him the existence of a new kind of ghost called a " Morion " very 

 similar to Driesch's entelechy. This particular spook appears 

 to me in nowise inferior to those of Driesch, Lodge or Bergson. 1 

 But I think Lord Ernest has in many instances misinterpreted 

 modern opinions too favourably to his own views. He says that 

 " all humanity is groping for God," which is only true, if at all, 

 in a very metaphorical sense. He further asserts that " all men 

 believe in a God," which is flatly untrue. He thinks that " the 

 history of species is the history of a gradual progressive ascent,'' 

 which is not the case, whatever meaning we attach to the word 

 "ascent." He says that the doctrine of the "interaction of an 

 outside intelligence with what are known as organisms" is now 

 rapidly gaining favour : and that " the chief reason for this change 

 of attitude is found in the complete failure of all attempted 

 explanations of life on materialistic lines." To this, I can only 

 reply that the belief mentioned is not " rapidly gaining " favour 

 but rapidly losing it. Moreover I am not acquainted with any 

 attempt to explain life on materialistic lines within the last 

 quarter of a century and do not therefore see how they have 

 failed. Those who adopt what Lord Ernest is pleased to call the 

 materialistic view do not attempt to " explain life" as he and his 

 friends do. They are only astonished at the facile slurring over 

 the difficulty : whereby mystics imagine they have explained 

 life, by talking about morions, entelechies or psychoids. 



Let it be recognised then that science will never permit an 

 " explanation " founded on the invention of new metaphysical 

 entities. Just as primitive peoples are apt to explain everything 

 they cannot understand by reference to the activities of a god, 

 so there still remains a strong mystical inclination to explain 

 "life" by reference to sundry ghosts and spectres to which 



1 It is noteworthy that Bergson has been appointed President of the Society 

 for Psychical Research for the current year ; he therefore may be looked upon as 

 the official head of the ghost-party. If I have made no mention of him in the 

 present article, it is because in my book Modern Science and the Illusions Oj 

 Prof. Bergson (Longmans) I said what I have to say from a scientific standpoint. 



