EDITORIALS 



The average scientist has often wondered how logic, with that 

 diametrically opposed to it, can together find such a comfortable 

 resting-place in the mental abode of Sir O. Lodge. This renowned 

 Sir Oliver Lodge on English man of science, in his recent presidential 



"Continuity" address before the British Assoc. for the Adv. 

 of Science/ advances at one and the same time ideas very plausible 

 and others highly improbable, to say the least. 



That the laws of chemistry and physics hold sway in the animate 

 as well as the inanimate world, but that the animate is something 

 more than a mere conglomeration of chemical and physical laws, 

 seems highly consonant not only with reason but with Observation. 

 But why Sir Oliver should put faith in psychic phenomena — the 

 study of which thus far has been barren of any tangible result — as 

 a means of supplying the missing link in "continuity," is beyond 

 comprehension. 



" Ever since the time of J. R. Mayer," writes Sir Oliver, " it 

 has been becoming more and more certain that, as regards Per- 

 formance of work, a living thing obeys the laws of physics, like 

 everything eise; but undoubtedly it initiates processes and pro- 

 duces results that without it could not have occurred — from a 

 bird's nest to a honeycomb, from a deal box to a warship. The be- 

 havior of a ship firing shot and shell is explicable in terms of energy, 

 but the discrimination which it exercises between friend and foe is 

 not so explicable. . . . Life introduces something incalculable and 

 purposeful amid the laws of physics; it thus distinctly Supplements 

 those laws, though it leaves them otherwise precisely as they were, 

 and obeys them all." 



Thus far, thus good! Loeb or Schäfer might be tempted to 

 deny part of this Statement, or Supplement it, but for most of us it 

 seems to have the ring of truth. But what are we to make of this : 



"... the f acts examined have convinced me that memory and 



1 For a complete account see the London Times, Sept. ii, 1913. 



133 



