LIFE AS MECHANISM 



possible."^ Modern biologists say he was correct ac- 

 cording to the knowledge of his time. But, it is not a 

 question of more or less knowledge, it is still the con- 

 fession of no knowledge we must make. There is only 

 one way to obtain this knowledge: let the biologist 

 in the laboratory produce a living cell which has not 

 been derived from other living matter; that would 

 convince us that life is a manifestation of physical 

 energy just as the physicist has shown in his labora- 

 tory that matter does attract matter and has thus 

 verified Newton's law of gravitation. Until he cre- 

 ates a living cell from dead matter, he is in the same 

 class as was Aristotle who tells us that dust breeds 

 fleas. 



The aim of science is to explain phenomena by a 

 single substance, which we may call either matter 

 or electricity, and to endow this substance with a 

 force of attraction which establishes the positions of 

 the atoms of the substance, and gives to them motion. 

 This is undeniably a monistic doctrine since it re- 

 duces phenomena to a single principle. From this 

 simple philosophical postulate, the physicist, includ- 

 ing the chemist who has also followed this method, 

 has attempted to construct a model of the world such 

 that if we know past actions we can predict with a 

 very considerable accuracy what will occur in the fu- 

 ture. While we may thus class the physicist as a mon- 

 ist, he can be so classed only after admitting a funda- 



1 Kant, Kritik der teleologischen Urtheilskraft, II Th., § 75. 



C 247 3 



