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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 847 



uinely rational, doctrine, that doctrine de- 

 parts at once from the way of science and 

 journeys on the way of mysticism and oc- 

 cultism. 



This means, brought down to specific 

 application, that search to-day after the 

 "germ of life" in the sense in which this 

 phrase has leaked out of biological labora- 

 tories and got into the popular mind is 

 mystical no less certainly than was search 

 after the philosopher's stone. It means 

 that a certain heavily veiled hope being 

 held out in certain biological quarters of 

 the indefinite prolongation of life is the 

 old search after the elixir of life and the 

 fountain of perpetual youth, refined and 

 modernized. It means that those biologists 

 who by intense research on, and still in- 

 tenser speculation about, a comparatively 

 few "elements" and "substances" in the 

 less well-known sections of the organic 

 realm, seem to expect presently to find a 

 hidden key that will unlock all or nearly 

 all the mysteries of organic nature, are on 

 the same quest with Dr. Faustus : the quest 

 after ultimate knowledge and are doomed 

 to failure and disappointment. 



In other words, the mighty tendency of 

 the human mind to transcendental and 

 mystical interpretations of the world which 

 manifests itself among primitive peoples as 

 fetishism, animism, and magic; among more 

 advanced peoples as idolatry proper; and 

 among nearly all of the most advanced 

 peoples as the supernatural element in 

 religion, persists in our physical science, 

 particxdarly in our biology, as materialism 

 and vitalism. 



Stating the problem in this broadly gen- 

 eralized way commits us to a very large, 

 difficult and important thesis. Obviously, 

 to deal with more than a small fragment of 

 it here is out of the question. In baldest 

 essentials the truth can be stated thus: 

 Materialism in common with magic consists 



(a) in assuming the existence of material 

 bodies to explain certain observed phenom- 

 ena when such bodies do not in reality 

 exist, or at least the existence of which is 

 never proved observationally ; or (&) in as- 

 suming that certain observed bodies possess 

 qualities which explain phenomena when in 

 reality no such qualities are possessed by 

 the bodies, or at least are never observed 

 directly. Vitalism in common with ani- 

 mism consists in assuming the existence of 

 non-material, essentially extra-corporeal 

 forces or principles to explain phenomena 

 when such forces or principles are never 

 proved to exist. The sophisticated thinker 

 and the untutored savage are alike in 

 recognizing the mystery inherent in the 

 universe; and they are further alike in 

 their attempted explanations. 



Just the fact that the universe is per- 

 petually in the throes of ' ' Creative Evolu- 

 tion" makes this mystery all-pervasive and 

 unending. It is of the very essence of a 

 living world. The wise man takes due ac- 

 count of this element of the incalculable, 

 the unpredictable as a characteristic of the 

 universe, particularly of animate nature ; 

 he is not driven thereby to despair of ever 

 knowing anything, but on the other hand 

 is preserved from the obsession of finding 

 a "sufficient cause" for everything under 

 the sun. He recognizes that the whole 

 process is the one great, sufficient and final 

 cause of all its phases, and with that con- 

 viction puts an end to all futile search for 

 "complete explanations" and "absolute 

 causes." The proximal causes, the work- 

 ings of the great process, are, however, of 

 absorbing interest to him. And they are 

 of interest down to the smallest detail; 

 nothing is insignificant, negligible, just be- 

 cause every minutest fragment is an inte- 

 gral and therefore influential part of the 

 whole. 



From this point of view, it can be readily 



