LIFE AS MECHANISM 



changes. The dualism, because of the limitations of 

 our finite minds, is there and we must accept it. 



Then the Stoics and the Epicureans reverted to 

 monism and used infinite pains to set a monistic uni- 

 verse in operation. They saw the universe only as a 

 manifestation of matter and force. The nature of 

 matter is its inertia, but it must also act. To avoid 

 this paradox; they, who could themselves be noth- 

 ing but matter and force, yet saw order in the uni- 

 verse; therefore, there is a God; therefore all things 

 are God ; and the mover and the moved are one. There 

 is apparently no use to reason with the monist; for 

 sooner or later he simply jumps over his difficulty and 

 conceals his error with such ingenuity that it still 

 fools us. It is discouraging; even today, men of 

 science are still deceiving themselves, and deceiving 

 others, by pretending, when they say matter is inert 

 and also attracts all other inert matter at a distance 

 or when they say life is mechanical or electrical en- 

 ergy, that the words they use give us any comprehen- 

 sible idea. 



No one can go further towards giving us a monis- 

 tic cosmic hypothesis than did Kant and Laplace. 

 They assumed, in their nebular hypothesis, that the 

 universe was originally an infinite number of atoms 

 uniformly distributed throughout space. These atoms 

 have no other properties but inertia and Newtonian 

 attraction. By the laws of physics and by experience, 



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