September 26, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



423 



the curious and evidently savage ritual, in- 

 sisted on by the United States officers, at 

 that hygienically splendid achievement, the 

 Panama Canal — the ritual of punching a 

 hole in every discarded tin, with the object 

 of keeping off disease ! What more absurd, 

 again — in superficial appearance — than the 

 practise of burning or poisoning a soil to 

 make it extra fertile ! 



Biologists in their proper field are splen- 

 did, and their work arouses keen interest 

 and enthusiasm in all whom they guide 

 into their domain. Most of them do their 

 work by intense concentration, by narrow- 

 ing down their scope, not by taking a wide 

 survey or a comprehensive grasp. Sugges- 

 tions of broader views and outlying fields 

 of knowledge seem foreigii to the intense 

 worker, and he resents them. For his own 

 purpose he wishes to ignore them, and 

 practically he may be quite right. The 

 folly of negation is not his, but belongs to 

 those who misinterpret or misapply his 

 utterances, and take him as a guide in a 

 region where, for the time at least, he is a 

 stranger. Not by such aid is the universe 

 in its broader aspects to be apprehended. 

 If people in general were better acquainted 

 with science they would not make these 

 mistakes. They would realize both the 

 learning and the limitations, make use of 

 the one and allow for the other, and not 

 take the recipe of a practical worker for a 

 formula wherewith to interpret the uni- 

 verse. 



What appears to be quite certain is that 

 there can be no terrestrial manifestation 

 of life without matter. Hence naturally 

 they say, or they approve such sayings as, 

 "I discern in matter the promise and po- 

 tency of all forms of life." Of all terres- 

 trial manifestations of life, certainly. How 

 else could it manifest itself save through 

 matter? "I detect nothing in the organ- 

 ism but the laws of chemistry and phys- 



ics," it is said. Very well; naturally 

 enough. That is what they are after; 

 they are studying the physical and 

 chemical aspects or manifestations of life. 

 But life itself — life and mind and con- 

 sciousness — they are not studying, and 

 they exclude them from their purview. 

 Matter is what appeals to our senses here 

 and now; materialism is appropriate to the 

 material world; not as a philosophy, but 

 as a working creed, as a proximate and 

 immediate formula for guiding research. 

 Everything beyond that belongs to another 

 region, and must be reached by other 

 methods. To explain the psychical in 

 terms of physics and chemistry is simply 

 impossible; hence there is a tendency to 

 deny its existence, save as an epiphenom- 

 enon. But all such philosophizing is un- 

 justified, and is really bad metaphysics. 



So if ever in their enthusiasm scientific 

 workers go too far and say that the things 

 they exclude from study have no existence 

 in the universe, we must appeal against 

 them to direct experience. We ourselves 

 are alive, we possess life and mind and 

 consciousness, we have first-hand experi- 

 ence of these things quite apart from labo- 

 ratory experiments. They belong to the 

 common knowledge of the race. Births, 

 deaths and marriages are not affairs of the 

 biologist, but of humanity; they went on 

 before a single one of them was under- 

 stood, before a vestige of science existed. 

 We ourselves are the laboratory in which 

 men of science, psychologists and others, 

 make experiments. They can formulate 

 our processes of digestion, and the material 

 concomitants of willing, of sensation, of 

 thinking; but the hidden guiding entities 

 they do not touch. 



So also if any philosopher tells you that 

 you do not exist, or that the external 

 world does not exist, or that you are an 

 automaton without free will, that all your 



