HYPOTHESIS 131 



mise,&quot; he wrote, &quot; that when ... I speak of the cause of any 

 phenomenon, I do not mean a cause which is not itself a pheno 

 menon ; I make no research into the ultimate or ontological cause 

 of anything&quot;. 1 The trammels he thus sought to impose upon 

 human thought were soon deemed too irksome, not only by philo 

 sophers, but even by the scientists who professed a general sym 

 pathy with the positivist philosophy. It is, indeed, conceivable 

 that scientists might agree to confine their efforts exclusively to 

 the discovery of coexistences and sequences between phenomena, 

 and to eschew all thought and all mention of non-phenomenal or 

 imperceptible entities, even as mere aids to investigation. 2 But of 

 course they have refused and rightly thus to debar themselves 

 from using their imagination at all events, in addition to their 

 senses. They have given a very wide interpretation indeed to the 

 term &quot;phenomenon,&quot; if the &quot;causes&quot; which they contemplate 

 nowadays in their hypotheses are to be regarded as phenomena. 

 Not only are some of the objects of current scientific hypotheses 

 i.e. some hypothetical causes of the phenomena of nature not 

 perceptible themselves by the senses, but they are not even in any 

 true sense positively picturable by the imagination. We are very 

 far removed indeed from the &quot; phenomenal antecedents &quot; of Mill 

 when we are introduced into the domain of &quot;ethers,&quot; &quot;vortices,&quot; 

 &quot;corpuscles,&quot; &quot;ions,&quot; and &quot;electrons,&quot; by the physicist, or into 

 the domain of &quot; ids &quot; and &quot; biophors &quot; and &quot; biotic energies &quot; by 

 the physiologist. Indeed it is not so clear that scientists have not re 

 turned to the &quot; occult &quot; entities of the &quot; antiquated &quot; metaphysics, 3 

 and merely rebaptized, in a more mechanical terminology, the 

 &quot; materia prima &quot; and &quot;powers&quot; and &quot;efficiencies&quot; and &quot;vital 

 forces &quot; of Aristotle and the Scholastics ! As a matter of fact, it 

 is now beginning to be recognized by scientists that all attempts 

 to explain nature, whether organic or inorganic, by collocations 

 and motions of material masses in space and time, i.e. by purely 



1 Logic, 111., v., | 2. 



3 C/. POINCARE, Science and Hypothesis, p. 223 : &quot; The day will perhaps come 

 when physicists will no longer concern themselves with questions which are inacces 

 sible to positive methods, and will leave them to the metaphysicians. That day has 

 not come yet ; man does not so easily .resign himself to remaining for ever ignorant 

 of the causes of things.&quot; 



3 See article, &quot; Weismann and the Germ-Plasm Theory,&quot; in the Dublin Review, 

 April, 1906, where Professor Windle suggests the comparison of Weismann s hy 

 potheses with the &quot;zns dormativa&quot; and other such &quot;virtutes occultae&quot; of the 

 older philosophy. C/. also, What is Life ? by the same author (Sands & Co., 1908) ; 

 and I. E. RECORD, April, pp. 398 sqq. 



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