2 54 Science Religion and Reality 



man is a thinking, willing, feeling creature, yet that does not hinder 

 the mechanistic explanation of such things as the laws of growth, 

 and the process of acidity-regulation of his circulatory fluids. 



On this point Merz has an interesting remark. He reminds 

 us that in some types of book-keeping the ledgers show all the 

 transactions of a complicated business yet disclose nothing of the 

 names of the persons involved and the purposes of the operations. 

 In other words, the process of oxidation of lactic acid during muscle 

 activity will be just the same in two cases though the purposes for 

 which the organism set the muscles in action may be entirely 

 different. Accordingly, we may agree with James Drever, who 

 in a recent paper said, " The behaviour of the living organism as 

 such it is not the physiologist's business to study. His task begins 

 and ends with the functioning of the individual mechanisms." 



According to this theory, then, it is the physical functions of 

 life that physics and chemistry are competent to explain, for such 

 questions as the distribution of animals and the general theory of 

 evolution, which obviously involve the consideration of conscious 

 striving, do not come under their entire dominion. McBride 

 in a recent essay has spoken of evolution as a vital phenomenon, 

 but, from his actual words, this means no more than that evolution 

 is in part a mental or psychological phenomenon, and in this 

 respect we may fully agree with him. 



Again we see how the whole subject hangs round the problem 

 of psychophysical interaction. There is no space in this paper 

 to go into the theories which have been advanced to give a good 

 account of this, and the reader who is anxious to follow up this 

 aspect of the problem must be referred to the writings of William 

 McDougall. It will be sufficient to say that the work of Lotze, 

 Clerk-Maxwell, Poynting, Boussinesq, and Lotka have shown how 

 psychophysical interaction may be conceived as possible. 



It will have been observed that, however we phrase it, we are 

 left with a complete dualism of matter and spirit. Whether we 

 remain at that point or proceed further by the adoption of a relative 

 dualism will depend upon our personal philosophical predilections. 

 For my part I prefer to adopt a relative dualism the way to which 

 was shown by Merz. It is a modification of Spinoza's. If we 

 do take this step we may also think it possible that laws may some 

 day be discovered capable of explaining both the mechanistic world 

 of physics and chemistry and that other world of mental phenomena 



