EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 



when Professor Haldane says there is a break be- 

 tween physics and biology and another between bi- 

 ology and psychology, he is admitting two miracles, 

 one of life and the other of the spirit. During the time 

 when the earth was too hot to permit life to exist on 

 it, the laws of the physical sciences could alone ac- 

 count for its history. When life began, there began 

 with it the laws of biology. If Professor Haldane is 

 correct that the laws of the two sciences are not con- 

 vertible, the appearance of life is a break, or miracle; 

 it cannot be explained by physical law and there evi- 

 dently could not have been a pre-existent biological 

 cause. The same is true when self -consciousness ap- 

 peared in man ; we cannot obviously account for what 

 we may call the spirit by any preceding phenomena of 

 biology or physics. The desire to link the three cate- 

 gories of the material, the vital, and the spiritual into 

 a single monistic philosophy is naturally strongest 

 amongst those psychologists who are endeavouring to 

 find a biological and physical support for their science 

 and to develop the mind as a progress from the be- 

 ginning of time. The biologists are quite willing to es- 

 cape from the psychologists but they cling to physics 

 because they, too, are embarrassed by the admission 

 that life began in a miraculous way. The physicists 

 persist in excluding both life and spirit as phenom- 

 ena of matter and energy and show no desire to 

 complicate further their already intricate problems. 

 Thus the sciences of physics, biology, and psychol- 



C 355 1 



