PREFACE 



natural laws, is the question. For my own part I 

 content myself with the thought of some unknown 

 and doubtless unknowable tendency or power in the 

 elements themselves — a kind of universal mind 

 pervading living matter and the reason of its living, 

 through which the whole drama of evolution is 

 brought about. 



This is getting very near to the old teleological 

 conception, as it is also near to that of Henri Bergson 

 and Sir Oliver Lodge. Our minds easily slide into 

 the groove of supernaturalism and spiritualism be- 

 cause they have long moved therein. We have the 

 words and they mould our thoughts. But science is 

 fast teaching us that the universe is complete in 

 itself; that whatever takes place in matter is by 

 virtue of the force of matter; that it does not defer 

 to or borrow from some other universe; that there is 

 deep beneath deep in it; that gross matter has its 

 interior in the molecule, and the molecule has its 

 interior in the atom, and the atom has its interior in 

 the electron, and that the electron is matter in its 

 fourth or non-material state — the point where it 

 touches the super-material. The transformation of 

 physical energy into vital, and of vital into mental, 

 doubtless takes place in this invisible inner world of 

 atoms and electrons. The electric constitution of 

 matter is a deduction of physics. It seems in some 

 degree to bridge over the chasm between what we 

 call the material and the spiritual. If we are not 



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