THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



save us — save us from the materialism of a scien- 

 tific age. 



The scientific temperament, unrelieved by a 

 touch of the creative imagination, is undoubtedly 

 too prone to deny the existence of everything be- 

 yond its ken. But science has its limitations, which 

 its greatest exponents like Tyndall and Huxley are 

 frank to acknowledge. 



All questions that pertain to the world within us 

 are beyond the reach of science. Science is the com- 

 merce of the intellect with the physical or objective 

 world; the commerce of the soul with the subjective 

 and invisible world is entirely beyond its sphere. 

 The very word "soul" belongs to literature and re- 

 ligion, and not to science. Science has no use for 

 such a word because it stands for something which 

 transcends its categories. Professor Tyndall con- 

 fessed himself utterly unable to find any logical 

 connection between the molecular activities of the 

 brain-substance and the phenomenon of conscious- 

 ness. 



In trying to deal with such a question, he says, 

 we are on the boundary line of the intellect where 

 the canons of science fail us. Science denies all in- 

 fluence of subjective phenomena over physical pro- 

 cesses. In the absence of the empirical fact, science 

 would be bound to deny that a man could raise his 

 arm by an act of volition; only "the phenomena of 

 matter and force come within our intellectual range." 

 54 



