SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 19 



book by two very eminent Scotsmen I allude to 

 The Unseen Universe by Balfour Stewart and P. 

 G. Tait it is maintained that the only reasonable 

 and defensible alternative to their hypothesis, 

 namely, the existence of a Creator, " is the stupen- 

 dous pair of assumptions that visible matter is 

 eternal, and that IT IS ALIVE." And they con- 

 tinue, " If anyone can be found to uphold notions 

 like these (from a scientific point of view), we shall 

 be most happy to enter the lists with him." * 

 Yet these assumptions which they regard as a 

 reductio ad absurdum, are actually put forward, 

 not so far as I am aware by physicists, who make 

 matter their particular study, but by biologists or 

 by some biologists. At any rate, in the last analysis 

 to this alternative, all such theories as those of an 

 anima mundi or immanent god, all pantheistic 

 ideas in fact really reduce themselves. 



Apart from any other arguments which can be 

 brought forward, and taking it for the moment as 

 a mere working hypothesis, I think our theory is 

 a more reasonable one than its rival. I can under- 

 stand the position of a man who says, " I neither 

 know nor can I know about these matters." That 

 was the position of Huxley, and still is the position 

 of many, though I think not of so many as was 

 once the case. But the "matter-alive" view I own 

 baffles me completely. It appears also to have 

 baffled many if not all of the physicists who have 

 studied it, like those from whom I have quoted. 

 One of the greatest of physicists, if not actually 

 the greatest, the late Lord Kelvin, in an address 



* Preface to second edition. (Italics and capitals as original.) 



