THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



heredity substance; — life environment: beginning 

 with monads and algae and ascending in a develop- 

 ing scale of plants and animals.^ Of these four cate- 

 gories, the first comprises all that is included by the 

 physicist in the word, energy; the others mean noth- 

 ing to him nor to Professor Osborn. Could any better 

 way of muddling thought be devised than to give 

 four different and incongruous definitions to his fun- 

 damental term? In what units of measure will he ex- 

 press the energy of the heredity substance, in what 

 units of measure will he express thought *? When we 

 analyse the conclusions of biological monism we shall 

 find that the biologists speak of matter and force and 

 energy, and they say life is one of their manifesta- 

 tions, but they are using words which convey no 

 meaning. 



We may define the unqualified mechanistic theory 

 of life as follows: if we could arrange atoms of the 

 chemical elements in the numerical quantities and in 

 the space relations to each other which they occupy 

 in the fertilized ovum of a man and place this body 

 in a proper physical environment, it would develop 

 into a man. 



As an example of a believer, without reservations, 

 in this mechanistic theory of life we can cite Haeckel. 

 In spite of the fact that he is rather a bug-bear to those 

 biologists and sociologists who, while advancing the 

 scientific and mechanistic doctrine of life, wish to 



2 Origin and Evolution of Life, p. xvi. 



C 252 3 



