December 23, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



633 



shirk the responsibility of philosophical 

 thought." The philosophy of these four, with 

 the possible exception of Whitehead, is gen- 

 eral and non-technical in character and is 

 addressed primarily to those who have a 

 trend in the direction of science. For the 

 " general reader " the investigation of Wliite- 

 head is rather too technical and special; the 

 work of Leclerc du Sablon is elementary and 

 somewhat rarefied, being dispersed over too 

 wide a range of subjects to help much in 

 forming a scientific philosophy to live by; 

 the work of Henderson is moved by a too 

 narrow view, and he exhibits what Thomson 

 in another connection speaks of as the false 

 simplicity of materialism ; but in " The 

 System of Animate Nature" we have a mag- 

 nificent contribution to the foundations of a 

 philosophy of biology of such sort as to find 

 a secure place in the lives of people of in- 

 telligence whether devoted to scientific pur- 

 suits or following other interests. 



At the front of the two volumes of his 

 Gifford lectures on " The System of Animate 

 Nature " Thomson sets the following classic 

 quotation from Francis Bacon : " This I dare 

 affirm in knowledge of Nature, that a little 

 natural philosophy, and the first entrance into 

 it, doth dispose the opinion to atheism, but 

 on the other side, much natural philosophy 

 and wading deep into it, will bring about 

 men's minds to religion." Thomson insists 

 that " the scientific picture has satisfied very 

 few thipkers of distinction, the chief reason 

 being that the contributions which each 

 science makes are always partial views, 

 reached by processes of abstraction, by focus- 

 ing attention on certain aspects of things." 

 We need a more comprehensive view which 

 allows a place for the feeling for nature and 

 enables us to relate it to the whole of our 

 activity. 



Consequently, " the aim of this study of 

 Animate Nature is to state the general re- 

 sults of biological inquiry which must be 

 taken account of if we are to think of organic 

 Nature as a whole and in relation to the rest 

 of our experience. Both among careful 

 thinkers and careless passers-by views of or- 



ganic Nature are held in regard, for instance, 

 to the organism as mechanism, the determin- 

 ism of heredity, the struggle for existence, 

 which seem to the author to be lacking in 

 accuracy or in adequacy, which therefore 

 tend to involve unnecessary difficulties in 

 systematisation and perhaps gratuitous con- 

 fusion in conduct. . . . While trying to keep 

 wishes from fathering thoughts, we have been 

 led in our study to see that the general re- 

 sults of Biology, when stated with accuracy, 

 are not out of line with transcendental con- 

 clusions reached along other paths. ... It 

 looks as if Nature were much more conform- 

 able than is often supposed to religious in- 

 terpretation, but we have not seen it to be our 

 duty to justify the ways of God to man. 

 We have tried to keep as close as possible to 

 the facts of the case, leaving philosophical 

 and religious inferences for those who are 

 better qualified to draw them." 



There is no attempt to reach transcenden- 

 tal results by the methods of science; but 

 there is a persistent purpose in the lectures 

 to show that there is nothing in science to 

 interfere with a certain class of transcenden- 

 tal conclusions reached by other means. And 

 the author does not hesitate to close his 

 twentieth and last lecture, a remarkable one 

 on "Vis Medicatrix Naturae" (The Healing 

 Power of Nature), with the question: " Shall 

 we not seek to worship Him whom Nature 

 increasingly reveals, from whom all comes 

 and by whom all lives ? " 



The first of the two volumes is devoted to 

 the realm of organisms as it is, and the 

 second to the evolution of the realm of organ- 

 isms. The author is thoroughly convinced 

 that the mechanistic interpretation of life is 

 insufficient. He quotes with approval : " On 

 the whole, there is no evidence of real prog- 

 ress towards a mechanistic explanation of 

 life." He says : " The apsychic view is out- 

 rageous." " There has not yet been given 

 any physico-chemical description of any total 

 vital operation." 



Biology seems justified in holding to the 

 view that the evolutionary process gives rise 

 to frequent outcrops of genuine novelties. 



