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wonders of creative evolution. Such a thought need 

 not hinder the fullest use of those conceptions in our 

 present stage ; for us, and now, they are true true 

 enough, anyhow. But we must keep an open mind 

 in the future, and beware of blocking an advance by 

 a blind reliance on the authority of theories which, 

 by such treatment, are elevated or degraded into 

 dogmas. 



So too with those wider philosophical questions that 

 for ever rise from scientific problems. The successive 

 oscillations of thought from mechanical to vitalistic 

 tendencies has been one of the features of our survey. 

 At recurrent times, the best work is done under the 

 inspiration of the hope of unifying the whole of nature 

 in one comprehensive scheme. The Greek atomists 

 extended their conceptions of the inorganic world to 

 cover the phenomena of life, unconscious of the 

 logical chasms in their reasoning. Some rash material- 

 ists thought that natural selection had solved all 

 problems. Once and again the explanation proved 

 insufficient, and the hope of reducing everything to 

 one science of nature, for the time at any rate, has 

 had to be abandoned. We have to be content with 

 regarding nature from several separate aspects, and 

 console ourselves for the loss of unity in the thought 

 of the greater fullness and richness of the manifold 

 prospect. 



Considered mechanically, a man, for instance, is a 

 somewhat complicated piece of mechanism of certain 

 dimensions, containing levers of various kinds and 

 sizes, and conforming to all the conceptual laws of 

 mechanics, such as gravity, like any inorganic body. 

 To the chemist he is a chemical laboratory, in which 



