354 THE WORLD OF LIFE chap, xvn 



explained by the one illogical assumption, their eternity ; 

 the one complete misnomer, monism ; the one alleged funda- 

 mental law which explains nothing, the " law of substance." 

 It will be seen that this alleged explanation — the 

 eternal material universe — does not touch the necessity, 

 becoming more clear every day, not for blind laws and 

 forces, but for immanent directive and organising MIND, 

 acting on and in every living cell of every living organism, 

 during every moment of its existence. I think I have 

 sufficiently shown that without this, life, as we know it, is 

 altogether unthinkable. No " eternal " existence of matter 

 will make this in the remotest degree imaginable. It is this 

 difficulty which the " monists " and the " eternalists " of the 

 Haeckel and Verworn type absolutely shirk, putting us off 

 with the wildest and most contradictory assertions as to 

 what they have proved ! 



I venture to hope and to believe that such of my readers 

 as have accompanied me so far through the present volume, 

 and have had their memory refreshed as to the countless 

 marvels of the world of life ; culminating in the two great 

 mysteries — that of the human intellect with all its powers 

 and capacities as its outcome, that of the organic cell with 

 all its complexity of structure and of hidden powers as its 

 earliest traceable origin — will not accept the loud assertion, 

 that everything exists because it is eternal, as a sufficient 

 or a convincing explanation. A critical examination of 

 the subject demonstrates, as the greatest metaphysicians 

 agree, that everything but the Absolute and Unconditioned 

 must have had a beginning. 



