LIFE AND SCIENCE 



ical and super-chemical certainly, and chemics and 

 mechanics and electro-statics include all the material 

 forces. Is life outside this circle? It is certain that 

 this circle does not always include life, but can life 

 exist outside this circle? When it appears it is al- 

 ways inside it. 



Science can only deal with life as a physical phe- 

 nomenon; as a psychic phenomenon it is beyond its 

 scope, except so far as the psychic is manifested 

 through the physical. Not till it has produced liv- 

 ing matter from dead can it speak with authority 

 upon the question of the origin of life. Its province 

 is limited to the description and analysis of life 

 processes, but when it essays to name what institutes 

 the processes, or to disclose the secret of organiza- 

 tion, it becomes philosophy or theology. When 

 Ilaeckel says that life originated spontaneously, he 

 does not speak with the authority of science, be- 

 cause he cannot prove his assertion; it is his opinion, 

 and that is all. When Helmholtz says that life had 

 no beginning, he is in the same case. When our 

 later biophysicists say that life is of physico-chemi- 

 cal origin, they are in the same case; when Tyndall 

 says that there is no energy in the universe but solar 

 energy, he is in the same case; when Sir Oliver 

 Lodge says that life is an entity outside of and in- 

 dependent of matter, he is in the same case. Phil- 

 osophy and theology can take leaps in the dark, but 

 science must have solid ground to go upon. When 



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