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sections cut through the model of nature our minds 

 construct, or different aspects from which it may be 

 regarded, or, to vary the simile, different-coloured 

 flashlights thrown by our minds on the picture they 

 have to examine. Mechanic looks at the model from 

 one point of view, chemistry from a second, biology 

 from a third. None is necessarily more fundamental 

 in its essence than another, though mechanic may 

 give a wider view, and from historical and psychologi- 

 cal reasons seem to us more primary. Thus science 

 as such is not only not committed to materialism a 

 belief in the dead matter of Moleschott and Biichner 

 as the sole reality, but does not involve a mechanical 

 philosophy, as is so often supposed. Even should a 

 theory of life come to be expressed in mechanical 

 terms, and agree with observed phenomena, it would 

 only show that the human mind found it more con- 

 venient to express its perceptions and conceptions of 

 life in mechanical language. It would not show that 

 there was any objective reality corresponding to the 

 conceptual scheme, still less that that reality cor- 

 responded to the particular aspect of it which our 

 minds selected. 



On the other hand, this empirical scheme of science 

 is equally far from lending support to an idealistic 

 or theistic belief. It simply has nothing to say on the 

 question of external reality, on the nature of " things- 

 in- themselves." It purchases its freedom from both 

 contending factions by a complete agnosticism, by a 

 strict attention to its own business as conceived by 

 itself the attitude of the Liverpool Chinaman who, 

 as a measure of security in a time of riot between 

 Romanists and Orangemen, decked his shop-front 



