366 Science Religion and Reality 



we have agreed to call the highest part of our nature. That the 

 controversial Naturalists v^^ere themselves high-minded and culti- 

 vated men is not disputed ; but their devotion to the good, the true, 

 and the beautiful was built not on their philosophy but on their 

 self-denying labours and pure unselfish lives. It is perhaps fortunate 

 that the philosopher is the reverse of audacious, except in speculation. 

 His books generally end in a salto mortale which lands him in very 

 familiar and conventional morality. 



The aim of every intellectual construction of the universe — 

 of every world-view, as the Germans call it — is to find universal 

 law, to comprehend all experience in a closed system. An excep- 

 tion does not (as a mistranslated proverb states) prove the rule ; it 

 disproves it. If there are phenomena, whether biological, psycho- 

 logical, or religious, which cannot be made to fit into the framework 

 of Naturalism, Naturalism as a philosophy is overthrown. Biologists, 

 among others, now assert that there are such phenomena. There 

 are some religious minds which rejoice in this new proof that 

 Omnia exeunt in mysterium. It pleases them to find that the closed 

 system is not closed, and that " contingency is brought into the heart 

 of things." I am not in entire sympathy with this feeling, though 

 I agree with Plato that " only that which is perfectly real can be 

 perfectly known," and that the impasse into which Naturalism 

 falls is an indication that the perfectly real is spiritual. But 

 those who take refuge in gaps find themselves in a tight place 

 when the gaps begin to close ; and those biologists who join the 

 idealists in exposing the limitations of Naturalism are them- 

 selves in search of a wider Naturalism which will find room 

 for life, mind, and spirit within the scheme of nature. The 

 inexplicable is for them, as for the naturalists of the last century, 

 a scandal, or at least a problem. Perhaps the most fruitful 

 line of thought, in view of the present situation, is to consider 

 briefly the problem of teleology, the possibility of purposiveness 

 in nature. 



It has been pointed out lately (by Mr. S. A. McDowall) that 

 organisms are not closed systems. The general tendency to the 

 degradation or dissipation of energy is balanced, for a time, by 

 a building-up process in the cell and in the organism. In this 

 building-up process we seem to see signs of purpose, and this purpose 

 is clearly not only individual but racial. Although many writers 

 speak of unconscious purpose in the sub-human and even in the 



