'Nothing But 423 



which depends upon the higher in a somewhat different sense 

 from that employed by the chemist. It is then in this new 

 sense, clarified by a consideration of new qualities as emergent, 

 that mind is conceived by some philosophers to control the 

 material. 



Nothing But 



Another difficulty, shared by the mechanist with his op- 

 ponent, is the frequent disregard of the fact that an aggre- 

 gate may manifest something more than the sum of its parts. 

 We find, for example, a specialist like the late Jacques Loeb, 

 denounced as " materialist " because, having described an 

 intricate organic process in physico-chemical terms, he is sup- 

 posed to see in life " nothing but " atoms and molecules and 

 electric charges. On the other hand, we find a man like 

 Ernst Haeckel, keenly aware that he and his kind at least 

 are capable of high-grade thinking and lofty sentiments, 

 assuming that whatever is in the whole must be in the parts; 

 and concluding therefore that every last atom of matter must 

 bear its fragment of the soul of the universe. Whatever 

 that may mean, and regardless of whether it is " true " or 

 not, the point is that while the logic is perfect, the assump- 

 tion is unwarranted, or at least gratuitous. While in a 

 strict mathematical sense nothing can come out of a com- 

 bination that did not go into it, we know that new qualities 

 do emerge from every aggregate, every recombination of 

 parts. 



Because of the frequent disregard of this principle, we 

 observe the tendency for some thinkers to push a given rule 

 or generalization beyond all legitimate bounds. The mech- 

 anist may thus go too far when he insists that since the 

 balance and the test-tube can demonstrate the organism to 

 be made up of so and so much carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, 

 and so on, whether alive or dead, the living being is " nothing 

 but " so much matter. Yet everybody knows that the or- 

 ganism dead is somehow different from the organism living, 



