78 THE MYSTERY OF THE PHYSICISTS. 



want them to tell us, for example, what happens when a 

 blade of grass " grows." Is it not very wonderful and pro- 

 foundly significant that notwithstanding the self-confidence 

 of our teachers, every attempt hitherto made by them to 

 explain by physics the growth or movements of the simplest 

 living thing should have proved an absolute failure ? Still 

 it is insisted, with wonderful pertinacity if not with logic, 

 that all causes that may be at work are in their nature 

 physical. One would have thought that so simple an 

 enquiry would have been immediately replied to, but no 

 answer is forthcoming from physicists and chemists. In 

 place of explanation, we are favoured with multitudes of 

 words of many syllables, but which do not add to, or make 

 more clear, our knowledge of the nature of the process of 

 growth. 



I am, however, glad to acknowledge that in some of the 

 more recent writings of ardent physicists may be found, 

 here and there, a tendency to admit, or some approach to 

 an admission, that a mystery of some kind lurks some- 

 where behind the phenomena they profess to explain but 

 they think that the apparent mystery may turn out not to be 

 a real mystery after all, or they profess to be able to account 

 for so much of the mystery as to justify their belief that the 

 whole will be adequately explained before many years shall 

 have passed. Or, lastly, they feel perfectly sure that their 

 descendants will understand all about it. Some physicists, 

 however, speak of a very special kind of mystery, but this 

 mystery of the physicists is to remain inexplicable for ever. 

 Indeed, many are convinced that a mystery which cannot be 

 solved by the physical philosophers of the present day must 

 certainly remain a mystery for all time. From the language 



