1 FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 5 



taken place under certain conditions in the course of cosmic 

 Evolution. Hence arise the three series in the real world: 

 physical, biological and psychical or mental. These con- 

 nections between them, which are based not on thought but 

 the facts of existence and experience, tend to show that they 

 cannot be fundamentally alien and irreconcilable, and that 

 some sort of bridge between them must be possible, un- 

 less we are to assume that our human experience is indeed 

 a mere chaotic jumble of disconnected elements. 



As I have said, the problem does not arise from the facts 

 either of experience or of existence. The problem is one for 

 our thought and our science. It is for our thought that the 

 mystery exists, and it is for knowledge that the great gaps 

 between the physical, the biological and the mental series 

 arise. The solution must therefore ultimately depend on 

 our more extended knowledge of these series and the dis- 

 covery of interconnections between them. The great dark- 

 nesses and gaps in experience are mostly due to ignorance. 

 Our experience is clear and luminous only at certain points 

 which are separated by wide regions of obscurity; hence 

 the apparent mystery of the luminous points and of their 

 isolation and unlikeness. Hence also the still greater 

 mystery of their actual union in the threefold incarnation 

 which constitutes human personality. 



But it is just this union which ought to warn us that the 

 apparent separateness of these three fundamental concepts 

 is not well founded in fact, and that a wider knowledge and a 

 deeper insight might be able to clear up the mystery, at least 

 to some extent, and to produce for thought as for existence a 

 sort of union or harmony of these apparently unrelated or 

 independent elements in our real world. More knowledge is 

 wanted. Our physical science ought to provide the solvent 

 for our idea of hard impenetrable inert matter, and in the 

 third chapter I shall inquire in how far there are already the 

 materials for such a solvent. Again, our biological science 

 should dispel the vagueness of the concept of life, and replace 

 it by a more definite meaningful concept, which will yet 

 not depend on purely material or physical elements. At 



