PREFACE 



I HAVE collected together this series of addresses and 

 articles, written, for the most part, during" my five 

 years at the University of Aberdeen, in the hope 

 that, in volume form, they may prove acceptable to 

 the students of the university and those for whom, 

 in the first place, they were written. But I am not 

 without hope that, in these days of stress and change, 

 they may be useful to a wider circle, anxious to 

 explore to the foundations the causes of modern 

 unrest, and to rectify for the future the causes which 

 have led to failure in the past. I have, from the 

 standpoint of an original investigator in physical 

 science, attempted to show how fundamentally and 

 beyond the possibility of escape our knowledge and 

 control of the inanimate world underlies and de- 

 termines the development of all the potentialities of 

 life. Admittedly, the attempt is a very imperfect 

 one, but scientific investigators too seldom endeavour 

 at all to make known the bearing of their special 

 fields of inquiry upon the general problems of life 

 and belief. 



Written at a time when millions of young men 

 were being killed in consequence of the destinies 

 of scientific nations being in the hands of people of 

 archaic mental outlook, no mock deference has been 

 paid to conventional habits of thought. The times 

 seem to call for outspokenness, if one has anything 

 to say, rather than persuasive propagandism and 



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