MODERN TENDENCY OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. L3I 



nothing whatever to do witli the matter, except that the truth 

 must always be ultimately more convenient than error; just as 

 ! say that it is true that a train is travelling over the surface of 

 the country, and not true that the ploughed fields and hedgerows 

 are contorting themselves in the eyes of stationary travellers. 

 The relativity of motion, thus pressed, and taking matter alone 

 into account, is really absurd. Yet those who discard the ether 

 are constrained to assert that there is 110 pragmatic difference 

 between the two forms of statement, and no mode of ascertaining 

 which is true: no meaning, in fact, in absolute motion at all. 



" The great thing to avoid in science is negations. Let us 

 make and substantiate positive assertions. But negative asser- 

 tions — statements as to what does not happen, or what is not 

 possible — although occasionally necessary, are always dangerous, 

 and should be kept in rigorous check. 



" Those who say that life cannot guide material processes 

 unless it is itself a form of energy ( which is false ; a man is not 

 a form of energy) — those who hold that life cannot, in fact, act 

 at all unless energy is at its disposal (which is certainly true) — 

 forget the apparently spontaneous activity of complex organised 

 molecules, forget the atomic disintegration manifested by radio- 

 activity. Energy is not a guiding or controlling entity at all. 

 It is a thing to be guided. Energy by itself is as blind and 

 blundering as a house on fire, or a motor car without a driver. 



" There is a great difference, moreover, between matter 

 potentially living and actually alive. It must never be forgotten 

 that in the physical universe our power is limited to the movement 

 of matter: all that happens, after that, is due to the properties 

 of matter and of its ethereal environment. If potentially living 

 matter is ever artificially produced, by placing things in juxta- 

 position and bringing natural physical resources to bear upon 

 the assemblage — which is all that we can do — then it may become 

 alive. But if this last step is taken, it will be because something 

 beyond matter, and outside the region of physics and chemistry, 

 has stepped in and utilised the material aggregate provided — in 

 the same way. presumably, as that in which it now steps in and 

 utilises the material provided, say. in an egg or a seed. That 

 is my belief, and only in that sense do I anticipate that the 

 artificial incarnation of life will ever be possible. Certainly life 

 has appeared on the earth somehow, and some day it may per- 

 haps appear under observation. In that case it will be said to 

 have been manufactured. Tt will be manufactured just as much 

 as radium or radio-activity has been manufactured, and no more." 



Transyaalia ; A New Planet. — It is announced 

 that Planet tgii LX, found at the Union Observatory, has 

 received the permanent number 715, and has been named Trans- 

 • aalia CAstr. Nachrichten. No. 4607). 



