THE NATURALIST'S VIEW OF LIFE 



judgment upon the very gods he worships. Must 

 he not bring a new force, an alien power? Can a part 

 be greater than the whole? Can the psychic domi- 

 nate the physical out of which it came? Again we 

 have only to enlarge our conception of the physical 

 the natural or make our faith measure up to 

 the demands of reason. Our reason demands that 

 the natural order be all-inclusive. Can our faith in 

 the divinity of matter measure up to this standard? 

 Not till we free ourselves from the inherited prej- 

 udices which have grown up from our everyday 

 struggles with gross matter. We must follow the 

 guidance of science till we penetrate this husk and 

 see its real mystical and transcendental character, 

 as Tyndall did. 



When we have followed matter from mass to 

 molecule, from molecule to atom, from atom to 

 electron, and seen it in effect dematerialized, 

 seen it in its fourth or ethereal, I had almost said 

 spiritual, state, when we have grasped the wonder 

 of radio-activity, and the atomic transformations 

 that attend it, we shall have a conception of the 

 potencies and possibilities of matter that robs scien- 

 tific materialism of most of its ugliness. Of course, 

 no deductions of science can satisfy our longings for 

 something kindred to our own spirits in the uni- 

 verse. But neither our telescopes nor our micro- 

 scopes reveal such a reality. Is this longing only 

 the result of our inevitable anthropomorphism, or 

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