A THEORY OF LIFE 165 



adaptations are, nor does he offer us the explana- 

 tions which, in his opinion, explain them. We 

 cannot, therefore, criticise his views, and can only 

 remind his readers that, because an explanation 

 plausibly explains an occurrence, it is by no means 

 always therefore certain to be the true explana- 

 tion ; it may, indeed, be wholly false. 



Further, those who have been wandering for 

 the past half-century in the fields of science have 

 become a little wearied of " explanations," 

 vaunted, for periods of five or ten years, as the 

 key to open all locks, and then cast into the 

 furnace. What the author would seem to mean 

 by his statement is this : " I am convinced myself 

 that we can do without a ' supernatural ' explana- 

 tion, and I regard as ' unscientific ' any ex- 

 planation which cannot be put to the test of 

 chemistry and physics ; hence I must shut the 

 door on anything like an entelechy, and, that 

 being so, it behoves me to look for some other 

 explanation." Of course, we are putting these 

 words into the mouth of our author ; if we were 

 dealing with the matter ourselves we should be 

 inclined to argue that, by the eliminatory method, 

 chemistry and physics do prove, or do help to 

 prove, the existence of an entelechy. 



With these expostulations we may turn to the 

 writer's pronouncements on the vitalistic question 

 which seem to us to be worthy of serious con- 

 sideration. Everybody knows that there are two 

 very diverse opinions on this topic ; the one that 

 there is, the other that there is not something 

 more a plus in living than there is in not- 



