Organisms and Their Origin 129 



"But the man of science, who, forgetting the 

 limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these 

 formulae and symbols into what is commonly un- 

 derstood by materialism, seems to me to place him- 

 self on a level with the mathematician who should 

 mistake the x's and y's with which he works his 

 problems for real entities; and with this further 

 disadvantage as compared with the mathematician 

 that the blunders of the latter are of no practical 

 consequence, while the errors of systematic ma- 

 terialism may paralyze the energies and destroy 

 the beauty of life." 



As Prof. Karl Pearson puts it in his " Grammar 

 of Science": "The problem of whether life is or 

 is not a mechanism, is not a question of whether 

 the same things, 'matter' and 'force/ are or are 

 not at the back of organic and inorganic phe- 

 nomena of what is at the back of either class of 

 sense-impressions we know absolutely nothing 

 but of whether the conceptual shorthand of the 

 physicist, this ideal world of ether, atom, and 

 molecule, will or will not also suffice to describe 

 the biologist's perceptions." 



Those who may be inclined to dissent from the 

 view that Science deals merely with "counters;" 

 which are representative of reality, may be re- 

 minded that even in the psychical realm we do the 

 same. Thus Berkeley affirms over and over again 

 that no idea can be formed of a soul or spirit. 



