94 The Higher Usefulness of Science 



syntheses produced by two organisms which in their 

 general features are so alike that there are no differen- 

 tials at all in the chemical substances which enter into 

 these syntheses, that is, in their nutrition, then there 

 appears nothing for it as concerns causal explanation 

 but to hold that the causes of the differences in the 

 products lie chiefly in the organisms and only secon- 

 darily in the chemical substances used. Although so 

 far chemists have made out little or nothing about just 

 how the human organism uses chemical substances in 

 accomplishing its intellectual, volitional, and moral 

 ends, yet we confidently infer that these like all other 

 organic activities have their peculiar chemistry ; and 

 there is ample ground for supposing that future re- 

 search will discover much about the nature of the 

 chemical processes involved. The importance to the 

 higher life of man of this conception of the organism's 

 relation to its food and drink and the air it breathes 

 can hardly be overestimated. If living beings really 

 have mastery to this extent over their environment, 

 then is man at his highest level a mighty being indeed 

 in the world of universal causation, for he is one of the 

 most unique and most potent of ah 1 these causes. Indi- 

 viduality, personality, under this view is in some sense 

 restored to the supreme place conceived for it by the 

 philosophies of self-realization. "In some sense," I 

 say, is there such restoration ; for the difference be- 

 tween this psycho-physiological and the former meta- 

 physical conception of personal power is that science 



