168 



DISCOVERY 



in 1910. Any reader desirous of studying the lustory of 

 work on these glands should study this paper, which is 

 printed in tire published Transactions of the Congress and 

 may be obtained from the Swedenborg Society, i Blooms- 

 burv Street, W.C.i. Yours, etc., 



Charles A. Hall. 



WOODBURX. ClVXDER. 



Dumbartonshire. 

 April 15, 1922. 



To the Editor of Discovery 



Sir, 



The value of Dr. Berman's book is its provocative 

 character. In the case of the writer of the editorial 

 comments in the April Discovery it seems to have 

 worked very well. The thesis of the book is at page 103 

 imder " The Vegetative Apparatus." If the statements 

 here made can be disproved by biologists, the fact can 

 be stated in a few words. 



I am informed that the demand for the book has 

 outrun the supply. I suggest your contributor should 

 try again and go one better. To belittle Dr. Berman's 

 effort while refusing to consider genuine scientific work 

 now being carried on in our midst does not make for 

 enlightenment. Yours, etc., 



(Mrs.) Elizabeth McLachlan. 

 147 Harley Street, 



London, W. 

 April 17, 1922. 



[It was obviously impossible to give an account of 

 " genuine scientific work now being carried on in our 

 midst " without occupying a great many more pages 

 than we usually do for our Editorial Notes. In the space 

 at our disposal we could not have done more than use the 

 results of that scientific work to criticise Dr. Berman's 

 book. In this number of Discovery an account is given 

 by a well-known research-worker in certain fields of the 

 study. Dr. L. T. Hogben, of Some Recent Work on the 

 Ductless Glands. — Ed.1 



Sir, 



To the Editor of Discovery 



I am greatly interested in your proposal to set up 

 a commission to collate the views of Science, Religion, and 

 Intellect on the Problem of Human Personality. If the 

 object is achieved satisfactorily it will not only meet a 

 need urgently felt by most thoughtful people, but it will 

 also, I think, achieve a definite advance in many branches 

 of discovery. 



All reasoned thought is an attempt to unify our other- 

 wise disconnected experiences, and it can never be content 

 till it has succeeded in unifying, or collating, every aspect 

 of all our experiences. To my mind this characteristic 

 of the human mind, the attempt to imify all experience, is 

 no mere phase of human evolution, but is the reflection, 

 or expression, of a fundamental reality. My acquaintance 

 with the bulk of the knowledge embraced in these three 

 terms is only of the general, er popular, kind for which' 

 Discovery primarily caters ; but the apparent differences 

 between their conclusions seem to me to be almost entirely 

 due to, first, the differences between their respective 



terminologies, and, second, the failure of their votaries 

 in general to recognise that their own terminology is 

 necessarily in part merely metaplrorical and in part merely 

 arbitrary ; that it is not, and in the nature of things 

 cannot be, an exact and complete expression even of the 

 particular conceptions which it is intended to represent, 

 much less of the fundamental realities which these con- 

 ceptions attempt to connote. They all, in fact, appear 

 to ms to be merely adventures of discovery into the same 

 region, but using different languages, and setting out from 

 different starting-points, or specially devoted to the in- 

 vestigation of different, but quite arbitrarily segregated, 

 portions or qualities of the field of investigation. 



Physical organisms have an independent career onlj- 

 to the extent that the life in them succeeds in co-operating 

 with the physical world and so utilising it for the further- 

 ance of its own self-expression. The more completely it 

 succeeds in so co-operating, the higher becomes the form 

 of life. Now, science appears to me to be the reflection, 

 or expression, in our present highly artificial environment 

 of the fundamental need of knowing ever more and more 

 about the physical world in order to be able more and 

 more effectively to co-operate with it for the satisfaction 

 of the insatiable requirements of self-expression — require- 

 ments which seem to grow as it were in geometrical 

 progression in proportion to the process of their realisation. 

 Religion is the expression of the impulse to " get there " 

 in self-expression, as distinct from the steps by which we 

 try to get there ; wliile the various mental activities 

 summed up by you under the term intellect appear as the 

 reflection of the fundamental need of judging of the degree 

 of adaptability of our physical environment to the require- 

 ments of our self-expression, and of seeking perchance 

 some other means of meeting these requirements, means 

 maybe created by ourselves or by our fellow-men. But 

 each of these is intrinsically mixed up with the other, is 

 merely a different aspect of the same thing. The division 

 into these three, or more, groups is itself only an arbitrary, 

 and more or less borrowed, division, the only justification 

 of which is the attempt to unify or simplify our experiences 

 by classifying them; which is just the method of all 

 reasoned knowledge. It is probable that none of the 

 experiences dealt with by one of these groups can exist 

 without the experiences dealt with by the others. For 

 instance, it is probable that the desire to " get there " is 

 only called into activity by contact with the means of 

 getting there. Or it may well be, for instance, that 

 relativity reigns at the very heart of things, that the 

 difference between God's Creation and our own creation 

 is merely one of degree, reflecting a similar difference 

 between God and ourselves, or that the physical world is 

 really merely the expression of that difference. 



In any event it is clear that these various branches of 

 discovery are so closely inter-related that each must throw 

 a flood of light on the other ; and I, for one, will await 

 with eager interest the result of such an enquiry. 



Yours, etc., 



J. R. Haldane. 

 29 Francis Street, 



Stornoway. 

 April 24, 1922. 



