THE WONDER OF LIFE 641 



appears to us not only an unwarrantable assumption, but 

 a contradiction in terms. 



The ' primitive nebulosity of the universe ', or of our 

 solar system at any rate, has probably its analogues in the 

 heavens of to-day, where worlds can be seen a-making., 

 As far as its movements and condensations and such 

 like went, it might have been physically described, and 

 it could not have been described in any other way. 

 But if within that whirling sea of molecules there ' re- 

 posed potentially the present actual world', then the 

 physical description would not have been the whole truth 

 about it. Yet we do not know how the physicist could 

 have indicated that his description was not exhaustive. 

 Whenever we think of facts like intelhgent behaviour 

 among animals or the reasoned discourse of Man, who has 

 harnessed electricity to his chariot, has made the ether carry 

 his messages, has annihilated distance, has coined wealth 

 out of the thin air, and has begun to control heredity 

 itself, we feel that if these qualities reposed potentially in 

 the nebula's whirhng sea, the physical description which 

 might have been given could not have been exhaustive. 

 Rather would we fall back on the fundamental proposition 

 of evolution which Aristotle discerned, That there is no- 

 thing in the End, which was not also, in its quahty, 

 in the Beginning. Our philosophical position is briefly. 

 That in the Beginning was the Logos. 



Bergson's View. — The two modern thinkers who have 

 most appreciated the wonder of life — that is to say, the 

 relation of theory of hfe and theory of knowledge — are 

 Professors Henri Bergson and Hans Driesch. We have 

 already referred, in a necessarily inadequate way, to 

 Driesch's rehabihtation of the Aristotehan conception of 



T T 



