362 Science Religion and Reality 



affirming the contingency of natural laws. This is the thesis of 

 Boutroux ; Bergson seems to reduce the universe to a stream of 

 forces flowing in no definite direction, a shoreless river deriving 

 the strength for its renewal from some blind and unintelligent 

 impulse. " With all his metaphors," says Aliotta, " Bergson fails 

 to convince us that continuous creative activity can give birth to 

 practical discontinuous activity, and this activity in its turn to the 

 objective world with all its determinations." A more fundamental 

 criticism is that a philosophy which has no place for the intelligence 

 is a contradiction in terms. 



In the last part of his book Aliotta discusses the influence of 

 new mathematical theories as shaking the foundations of a material- 

 istic philosophy. I must leave this topic to those who are qualified 

 to deal with it. It is the subject of Professor Eddington's essay, 

 which follows that of Professor Aliotta. 1 will only say that an 

 outsider like myself feels a strong suspicion that the new instrument 

 with which Einstein has presented the mathematicians is being put 

 to uses for which it was never intended. I cannot see how a purely 

 mathematical theory can either prove or disprove materialism. In 

 fact, I am still unconvinced that it has much importance either for 

 the metaphysician or for the theologian. 



It appears to me that Professor Aliotta might have kept further 

 apart the philosophical revolt against intellectualism and the revolt 

 of biology and psychology against mechanism. The form - belongs 

 to epistemology, the theory of knowledge, the latter belongs to pure 

 natural science. The reaction against intellectualism is^ on the 

 whole, hostile to the claims of science ; the revolt against the 

 tyranny of mathematics and physics is justified by the fact that these 

 sciences have not succeeded in explaining the phenomena of life ; 

 it is suspected that they are not, as was once supposed, universally 

 valid principles. Thus we find some of our leading biologists 

 inclining to some form of animism or vitalism, without showing 

 the slightest tendency to disparage the claim of natural science to 

 interpret the truth of phenomena, or to follow the pragmatists in 

 denying the possibility of a disinterested and successful pursuit of 

 things as they really are. The anti-intellectualist movement 

 seems to me to lead to sceptical subjectivism. It discredits the 

 authority of science, but it is equally damaging to religion, or at any 

 rate to Christianity. For Christianity aims at nothing less than 

 absolute truth. The Christian God is not only relative to human 



