10 PREFACE 



we scrutinise Professor Haeckel's excursions into eccle- 

 siastical history, but should influence us no further. The 

 speculations of a trained thinker and widely informed student 

 are always entitled to respect. I propose, therefore, in the 

 following essay to give in readable form the actual condition 

 of our knowledge of the origin and nature of life, and to see 

 how far Sir Oliver Lodge's theory is consistent with it. 



The task is rendered somewhat difficult from a variety of 

 reasons that the reader will appreciate as we proceed. The 

 theory is put forward in language which is neither clear nor 

 consistent. It is throughout stated as the alternative to a 

 " Materialistic " conception of life which exists mainly in 

 Sir Oliver Lodge's imagination and a few dusty and forgotten 

 controversial works. It is contrasted all through Sir Oliver's 

 work, Life and Matter, with the theory of Professor Haeckel; 

 but this is quite erroneously stated and most unfairly 

 misrepresented. When, in addition, the reader finds 

 Haeckel's system assailed with a shower of such painfully 

 familiar missiles as " miserable and degraded Monism," 

 "extravagant pretensions," "free-and-easy dogmatism," 

 "rather fly-blown production," "jubilant but uninstructed 

 and comparatively ignorant amateur materialist," and when 

 he remembers that these come from the Principal of an 

 English University and one of the most religious thinkers of 

 our time, he feels a sort of compulsion to accept what is set 



