424 The Inward Urge to Change 



however confident we are in the balance and the test-tube, 

 however uncongenial we may find the assumption of an 

 imponderable " vitality." In the same way, as we have seen 

 in the case of Haeckel, one may push the explanation from 

 purpose or spirit too far in the opposite direction. I can 

 convince myself that I know what I know only because of 

 some processes in my immaterial mind; but that is far from 

 demonstrating that all knowable exists only " in the mind " 

 or consists of " nothing but " mind. 



The difference between a well executed sculpture and a 

 block of marble of the same mass is not to be described in 

 physico-chemical terms. It is not necessary for the mechan- 

 ist to save his intellectual pride by declaring that the sculp- 

 ture is " nothing but " marble. So long, however, as the 

 scientist continues to analyze intricate organic processes by 

 following his mechanistic methods, we have no right to dis- 

 parage his results for fear that he may reduce our soul to 

 '* nothing but " matter. 



Creative Synthesis 



The founder of modern experimental physiology, Claude 

 Bernard, has been again and again roundly denounced as a 

 ** materialist " because he insisted upon carrying the methods 

 of the physical and chemical laboratories over to the study 

 of living processes. Nevertheless he also insisted in all of 

 his teaching that the value of any analysis is limited by the 

 fact that the elements, when separated from the whole, have 

 different relations. However much we may learn from the 

 parts, the whole can only be understood as a whole. In his 

 Introduction a la Mcdecine Experimentale, first published in 

 1865, he writes: 



'* In chemistry, synthesis produces, weight for weight, the same body 

 made up of identical elements combined In the same proportions; but 

 In the case of analyzing and synthesizing the properties of bodies, i.e. 

 synthesizing phenomena, it is much harder. Indeed, the properties of 

 bodies result not merely from the nature and proportions of matter, but 



