68 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



in which the armchair naturalist, the man who shapes the 

 world according to his whim, is able to take delight, but in 

 which the observer, the man grappling with reality, fails to 

 find a serious explanation of anything whatsoever that he 

 sees. In my own surroundings, I notice that those who are 

 most positive in the matter of these difficult questions are those 

 who have seen the least. If they have seen nothing at all they 

 go to the length of rashness. 



It is now suggested by representative scientists 

 that many of the generalizations which for a long 

 time have been part of the popular scientific creed, 

 indiscriminately accepted by the unwary, would 

 never have been formulated had the works of 

 Fabre been better known. 



Shall we weep or smile at the wiseacre wisdom 

 of the Spencerian materialist who but yesterday 

 announced, in words full of sound and fury, but 

 signifying nothing, that: "Life is merely a name 

 for the sum-total of the physico-chemical proper- 

 ties of protoplasm." 17 Pray, and what archangel 

 told him that? 



Even among those who hesitate to acknowledge 

 a Creator the theory of vitalism, i.e., of an immi- 

 nent life-principle, a soul, as we have always been 

 accustomed to call it, is rapidly replacing the ob- 

 solete theory that there is nothing but physics and 

 chemistry in the world, and that life, in plant, 

 brute and man, is merely the result of mechanical 

 action, propelled by a force God knows from 

 where. This is the causo-mechanical theory, still 



" Hugh Elliott, "Modern Science and Materialism," p. 94. 



