LIFE; BODY AND MIND 195 



plants. Yet the belief that even an infinite suc- 

 cession of such investigations would ultimately 

 lead to a comprehensive understanding of vital 

 phenomena seems to be one of those illusions, 

 like the ignis fatuus of the mechanistic philoso- 

 phers, which blind our eyes to many interesting 

 trails that should tempt the scientific explorer. 



Perhaps our genius for unity will some time 

 produce a science so broad as to include the 

 behavior of a group of electrons and the be- 

 havior of a university faculty, but such a pos- 

 sibility seems now so remote that I for one 

 would hesitate to guess whether this wonderful 

 science would be more like a mechanics or like a 

 ps3^chology. Indeed, if all the sciences now exist- 

 ing could be brought within one great scheme, 

 would not this very process of unification be 

 accompanied by the discovery of great bodies of 

 new and equally mysterious phenomena, the 

 existence of which has not yet been suspected? 



The whole idea of evolution, which during the 

 last half century has penetrated so deeply into 

 every branch of philosophic thought, seems to 

 be essentially connected with the one-way time 

 which we discussed in a previous chapter. Evo- 

 lution implies constant growth, leading to new 

 combinations, new substances, new forms and 



