2 Life and Matter [chap.i. 



ignorant of the theories which weld those 

 facts together. Indeed, in his own person 

 he is an example of the opposite procedure, 

 for he himself frequently takes pleasure in 

 overlooking the boundary and making a 

 wide survey of the position on its physical 

 side a thing which it is surely very 

 desirable for a philosopher to do. 



But if that process be regarded as satis- 

 factory, it is surely equally permissible for a 

 man of science occasionally to look over 

 into the philosophic region, and survey the 

 territory on that side also, so far as his 

 means permit. And if philosophers object 

 to this procedure, it must be because they 

 have found by experience that men of 

 science who have once transcended or trans- 

 gressed the boundary are apt to lose all 

 sense of reasonable constraint, and to disport 

 themselves as if they had at length escaped 

 into a region free from scientific trammels 

 a region where confident assertions might 

 be freely made, where speculative hypo- 

 thesis might rank as theory, and where 



