THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE AND MIND 93 



material energies means to move material particles. Of 

 disembodied energies we know nothing I have shown how- 

 Sir Oliver Lodge discards "energy" altogether when he is 

 asked for the fundamental factors in physics, and recognises 

 only moving particles of ether. How does the immaterial 

 move particles of matter ? And when this difficulty is fully 

 realised, another awaits us. To build up the frame of a 

 single organism and direct its energies for the common life- 

 purposes, his immaterial principle would have to be as con- 

 scious, as deliberate, as much guided by a plan, as the man 

 who puts the stones together to form a house. Who will 

 admit this for the lower type of animals or for the plants ? 

 From every point of view, it is far more satisfactory to look 

 to the unconscious, elaborate mechanism of the organism, 

 which science is gradually mastering. 



How comes it that a man like Sir Oliver Lodge so clearly 

 deserts ordinary scientific procedure in his speculations on 

 life, and makes these desperate efforts to introduce the 

 immaterial ? His position can only be understood when we 

 remember that he is convinced of the immateriality of 

 mind from a totally different set of considerations from 

 psychical research. As these considerations are not men- 

 tioned in his book, I cannot deal with them. It is, however, 

 only just to him to point out that the arguments I have 

 analysed the analogies and speculations and conjectures 

 that crumble into dust the moment you seriously test them 

 are not the real grounds of his conviction. I will only say 

 that those real grounds have nothing to do with his compe- 

 tence as a man of science, and that they only bring him 



