BIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 73 



the organism over the external world, and to its 

 greater independence. 



A direction towards more mind is visible ; and this 

 development of greater mental powers has been in all 

 the later stages the chief instrument of acquiring 

 control and independence. More and more of matter 

 is embodied in living organisms, more and more 

 becomes subservient to life. 



Thus, while in physics and chemistry we see a 

 tendency towards the extinction of life and activity, 

 in biology we see a tendency towards more life and 

 more activity ; and this latter tendency is accompanied 

 and largely made possible by the evolution of greater 

 intensity of mental process — of something, that is 

 to say, of which we cannot as yet take account in 

 physics and chemistry. 



The biologist may well ask himself the question 

 — ' Is it not possible that this evolving mind, of 

 whose achievements on its new level in man we are 

 only seeing the beginning, may continue to find more 

 and more ways of subordinating the inorganic to 

 itself, and that it may eventually retard or even 

 prevent the attainment of this complete degrada- 

 tion of energy prophesied by physico-chemical science ? 

 It is not possible that this great generalization only 

 applies to phenomena in their purely material aspect, 

 and that when we learn to detect and measure the 

 mental aspects of phenomena we may find reason 

 to modify the universal applicability of this law of 



