THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 27 



thought is not some sacred and mystic norm that has to be 

 obeyed for transcendental reasons. The logician observes 

 the thought-processes, as the physicist observes natural 

 processes, and draws up a list of the right tracks of reason- 

 ing the paths the mind follows when it reaches true 

 conclusions. One of these " laws," based on a very wide 

 experience, is that " things are not to be multiplied without 

 need." It is not a new discovery. It was well known to 

 the medieval schoolmen, though they paid a masterly in- 

 attention to it in practice. All logicians insist on it to-day. 

 You may violate it in your speculations, but you may pay for 

 the violations, as in the case of any other law. If you seek 

 truth, you will observe it ; that is what logicians mean when 

 they use imperious language. How does it apply to our 

 present subject ? 



There is no discussion to which it is more pertinent. I 

 have said that there must be some or one ultimate and 

 eternal element that was not evolved. It is the ambition of 

 science to reduce the contents of our solar system to two 

 such elements, matter and energy, possibly to one further 

 element in which the two are associated. That would be 

 an ideal Monism, and, as Sir Oliver Lodge says, "all 

 philosophy aims at being monistic " (p. 10). He is, in fact, 

 so sensible of this that he claims to be a Monist. We shall 

 see that he is a Dualist of a very pronounced type. He 

 says that we have our material frame of things on the one 

 hand, and there is a quite distinct spiritual world or 

 " reservoir " on the other, which reveals itself to us through 

 the living organism. When the cat dies its vital "power" 



