Organisms and Their Origin 129 



"But the man of science, who, forgetting the 

 limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these 

 formulae and symbols into what is commonly un- 

 derstood by materialism, seems to me to place him- 

 self on a level with the mathematician who should 

 mistake the x's and y's with which he works his 

 problems for real entities; and with this further 

 disadvantage as compared with the mathematician 

 that the blunders of the latter are of no practical 

 consequence, while the errors of systematic ma- 

 terialism may paralyze the energies and destroy 

 the beauty of life." 



As Prof. Karl Pearson puts it in his " Grammar 

 of Science": "The problem of whether Hfe is or 

 is not a mechanism, is not a question of whether 

 the same things, 'matter' and 'force,' are or are 

 not at the back of organic and inorganic phe- 

 nomena — of what is at the back of either class of 

 sense-impressions we know absolutely nothing — 

 but of whether the conceptual shorthand of the 

 physicist, this ideal v/orld of ether, atom, and 

 molecule, will or will not also suffice to describe 

 the biologist's perceptions." 



Those who ma/ be inclined to dissent from the 

 view that Science deals merely with "counters;" 

 which are representative of reality, may be re- 

 minded that even in the psychical realm we do the 

 same. Thus Berkeley affirms over and over again 

 that no idea can be formed of a soul or spirit. 



