456 



The Review of Reviews. 



SCIENCE AND EDUCATION 



SIR OLIVER LODGE ON 

 PROFESSOR SCHAFER. 



In the Contemporary Review for October Sir 

 Oliver Lodge treats of life and Professor 

 Schafer. He insists that science inevitably pro- 

 ceeds by the method of abstraction. 



POTENTIALLY LIVING MATTER. 



The business of a biologist is to study the 

 phenomena exhibited by matter under the in- 

 fluence of life, not to know what matter is or 

 what life is : — 



A farmer moves a seed into the ground, or an egg 

 into an incubator; and a living thing results, which 

 might not otherwise have appeared. In other words, 

 life of a certain kind has been thereby enabled to 

 interact with a particular portion of matter, and to 

 display itself amid material surroundings. So likewise 

 if life makes use of a certain molecular arrangement 

 called protoplasm, it may be able to make equal use of 

 it by whatever means such compound is prepared ; in 

 which case potentially living matter will become alive. 

 Biologists will not agree with this mode of expression; 

 but I claim that it is the manifestation of life, in 

 association with matter, that is studied by them; it is 

 not life itself. 



NATURE OF LIFE STILL NOT KNOWN. 



Sir Oliver Lodge is not in the slightest degree 

 afraid of potentially living matter becoming 

 alive. He says : — 



Let us assume, for the present, that a positive result 

 in so-called spontaneous generation will some day be 

 attainable, and that a low form of life may come into 

 being under observation ; and let us consider what it 

 will really mean when such a thing happens. All that 

 the experimenter will have done will have been to place 

 certain things together — to submit, for instance, chemical 

 compounds to certain influences. If life results, it will 

 be because of the properties of those materials, and of 

 the laws of interaction of life and matter, just as truly 

 as when a seed is put into the ground, or an egg into 

 an incubator. It will be a step beyond that, truly, but 

 it will be a step not of a wholly dissimilar kind. The 

 nature of life will not be more known than before; 

 any more than the nature of magnetism is known to 

 a child wiio succeeds in evoking it in a piece of steel. 



Life that has originated previously in ways 

 unknown may now be brought under human 

 observation in a laboratory : — 



^ye shall then begin to examine the properties of 

 Hying matter under very favourable conditions; and 

 discoveries may be expected. Rut all that humanity 

 will have done will have been to place materials together 

 and watch the result. 



WARNING TO THE THEOLOGIANS. 



Sir Oliver concludes by advising theologians 

 not to base their argument for the direct action 

 of the Deity on the failure to put together 

 materials which will result in living matter : — 



Antecedent life can certainly prepare a suitable 

 habitat, but perhaps a life-receiving preparation may 

 be produced in other, at present unknown, ways. In 

 an early stage of civilisation it may have been supposed 



that flame only proceeded from antecedent Same, but 

 the tinder-box and the lucifer-match were invented 

 nevertheless. Theologians have probably learnt by this 

 time that their central tenets should not be founded, 

 even partially, upon nescience, or upon negations of any 

 kind ; lest the placid progress of positive knowledge 

 should once more undermine their position, and another 

 discovery have to be scouted with alarmed and violent 

 anathemas. 



MARVELS OF TELEPATHY. 



In the North American Review Mr. John D. 

 Quackenbos, M.D., asks: Is telepathy, or 

 psychic transmission, a fact or a delusion? 



HUMAN MARCONI RF.CEIVERS. 



He argues that it is a fact. He says : — • 



Telepathic conveyance is the only explanation of 

 accurate information given to a friend of the writer's 

 more than forty years ago, by a Chinaman, concerning 

 the loss of one of his ships eight hundred miles away, 

 afterwards verified to the letter as to time, place, and 

 detail. When asked how he knew of the disaster, the 

 Chinese percipient said that when he desired news he 

 went into a certain dark room in Canton and sat down. 

 If there was any important action occurring, it was 

 communicated to his mind by agents stationed at distant 

 points. 



The twelve-year-old son of Dr. F. N. Brett, lately 

 Professor of Bacteriology in the College of Physicians 

 and Surgeons at Boston, was gifted with X-ray vision, 

 so that when hypnotised by his father he could " look 

 right into and through the human body," seeing the 

 internal organs as readily as one would see objects 

 through a window. In dozens of instances this boy 

 located tumours, ^reign bodies, bullets in gun-shot 

 wounds, valvular lesions, and so forth. But Leon Brett 

 was always approximated to the patient. It was X-ray 

 vision at short range. 



X-ray vision at long range was afforded by 

 a woman who, under hypnotism, described a 

 patient five miles away, diagnosing his disease 

 correctly and sometimes better than the surgeon. 



NEW PHRASES FOR AN OLD FACT. 



The writer concludes with this forecast : — 

 Are we on the eve of discovering a much more mar- 

 vellous application of psychic force whiih will develop 

 in a man a spiritual consciousness, make him superior 

 to all science as at present interpreted, ellect that adjust- 

 ment with natural law which will banish disease and 

 unlock the door to millennial perfection? Let a selected 

 number of persons be empowered to intercept and utilise 

 for purposes of communication the vibrations radiating 

 from personalities they wish to rommunicate with, and' 

 impressions for uplift and general heiterment might be 

 given without the objective knowUdge or consect. A 

 few thousand well-wishers might in this way bring alxiut 

 a world-wide moral revolution. And, further, the same 

 ill understood psychic force which, when applied by 

 a limited number of specially gifted individuals, has 

 tipped tables and moved pianos, may possibly, when 

 developed, move houses as well, and literally cast the 

 mountain into the sea. 



An ancient way of describing this anticipated 

 process was " thf prayer of faith." 



