• THE SYSTEM OF ANIMATE NATURE.* THERE are high-minded men

and women among us who main.. tarn that they can detect something making for spiritual

elevation even in the midst of this orgy of materialism which now seems on the point of engulfing civilization, but many look to the future with dismay, their spiritual faith badly shaken by the fierce, if sometimes insidious, assaults of the large army of materialists. -How frequently must the cry have gone up : " Lord, I believe ; help thou mine unbelief "

To such as these the volumes containing the Gifford Lectures delivered by Professor J. Arthur Thomson at Aberdeen in 1915 and 1916 will appear to come as a direct answer to prayer, even though, as the author says in his preface : " We have not seen it to be our duty to justify the ways of God to man. We have tried to keep as close as possible to the facts of the case. leaving philosophical and religious inferences to those who are better qualified to draw them."

Strange that from the ranks of science should come the builders of the dam against the materialistic flood, from the

ranks of those who appear to be responsible more than any other section of the community for opening wide the flood- gates through which the all-engulfing waters flow. The explana- tion is given in the words of the ever-wise Bacon, which here stand before the author's preface : " This I dare affirm in knowledge of Nature, that a little natural philosophy, and the first entrance into it, doth dispose the opinion to atheism, but on the other side much natural philosophy, and wading deep into it, will bring about men's minds to religion." Professor Thomson has certainly waded deep into natural philosophy, and the results of his study are lucidly set forth in this series of lectures.

The wonderful- advances made in physics and chemistry, advances almost beyond the comprehension of the average man or woman, have stimulated belief that by the application

of the laws of physics and chemistry we shall ultimately be able to explain the origin of life and even, perhaps, produce a living

organism in the laboratory. Certainly many machines, the product of the physicist's ingenuity, appear on superficial examination to approximate very closely to living organisms, but a little closer investigation will show that they lack the essential insignia of life : above all, the most perfect machine is unable to maintain itself, to make its own repairs, a power within the capacity of the meanest organism. Still, no one contends that we are at present within measurable distance of

producing synthetically a living creature ; what is discussed in these lectures is the possible prophetic nature of the mechanistic vision, in other words the question whether, given the present or even future knowledge of the laws of physics and chemistry, it will be possible in terms of these laws to explain life. Few of us are qualified to enter the lists with the doughty champions of the two schools of thought, the mechanistic and the biological —the old vitalism is rejected by both sides. Rather do we agree with. Sir Thomas Browne, who in his Itsligio. Medici says :— " Every man is not a proper champion for Truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of Verity : many from the ignorance of these Maxims, and an inconsiderate Zeal unto Truth, have too rashly charged the troops of Error, and remain as Trophies unto the enemies of Truth. A man may be in as just possession of Truth as of a City, and yet be forced to surrender."

Whatever view the reader may hold concerning the origin of life, he cannot but admire the skill with which the lecturer marshals his facts, and be impressed with the- arguments he bases on them. Professor Thomson is not satisfied that life, mind, the aspirations of the soul, can be explained in terms of attractions and repulsions of atoms ; we wonder, indeed, if anyone really is, even though the workings of his reason may impel him towards such an explanation. It is, however, the aim of the lecturer to show that feeling and reason are not necessarily opposed ; indeed, he would appear to affirm that, though feeling should be rigorously excluded from scientific investigation, in philosophical consideration of the results of such investigation reason without feeling is not reason at all.

Now one of the questions to which the founder of the Gifford Lectureships desired an answer from the lecturer was : To what extent does our knowledge of Nature conform with our conception of God ? In the fifth section of the wonderful first

lecture of the series, devoted to a consideration of the " =- fathomed universe," speaking of the function of feeling in our • The System of Animate Nature. By Professor J. Arthur Thomson. 2 vols. London: William and Norgate. [30a. net.]

view of Nature, Professor Thomson says : " Through feeling we discern what science cannot get into focus." In this con- nexion the words of the anthem will recur to many : " If with all your hearts ye truly seek Me, ye shall ever surely find Me"—words so insistent on the value of feeling 4A3 the highest quest of man.

The first lecture certainly provides much food for thought. Herein are discussed the purposes and limitations of scienoe.

The lecturer is well acquainted with the remarkable develop- ments and discoveries of the past century, and rejoices in the progress ; yet, as he says, in spite of all this progress, we stand wondering before an unfathomed, universe, and he does not altogether hide his opinion that much of it must remain un- fathomable. We speak of certain Laws of Nature, but these are not more than statements of certain facts, verifiable state- ments, so certain that on deductions from them we are prepared to risk our lives, but they are not explanations.. Concerning the law of gravity Newton himself wrote : I have not been able.to deduce from phenomena the raison d'itre of the properties of gravity and I have set up no hypotheses " ; and. the late Professor J. H. Poynting said : " We must confess that physical laws have greatly fallen off in dignity. No long time ago they were quite commonly described as the fixed laws of Nature, and were supposed sufficient in themselves to govern the universe ; now we can only assign to them the humble rank of mere descriptions, often erroneous, of similarities we believe we have observed. . . . A law of Nature explains nothing, it has no governing power, it is but a descriptive formula, which the careless have sometimes personified."

Many pages of the first lecture are devoted to a consideration of the limitations of science, a healthy and even necessary pastime for the scientist, for, as the author says : " Science maker so many permanent discoveries, never contradicted though oftsn transcended, that she acquires an assured confi- dence which has only been equalled by that of theology." He claims, however, as a wholesome sign of the tendency of modern science, that it is acutely aware of its limitations, a claim sup- ported by reference to the statements of Du Bois-Reymond, Lord Kelvin, and many others. It is well to be reminded that " much so-called ' explanation ' is reducing unusual unintelligi- bility to order rather than to radical understanding."

It is impossible in the space available for a review of these lectures to do more than indicate their substance, the subject is far too complex. There is no padding in these volumes—every sentence is a necessary part of the lecturer's presentation of his case—so that even the small-type summaries the writerappends to each lecture give an unsatisfactory impression of it. Having dwelt on the similarities and contrasts between the realm of organisms and the domain of the inorganic, Professor Thomson quotes with approval Professor Enriques' opinion that " every- thing around is living and active, save for a difference in the intensity or in the rapidity of the changes and in the relative importance of the internal and external factors for the course of the phenomena." But he maintains that the inorganio domain is devoid of the individuality, reproductivity, freedom of action, endeavour, and purposiveness characteristic of the realm of organisms. • Necessary as it may be for the thesis of the continuity of evolution, which maintains that everything was implicit in the beginning of the world to become explicit in the course of evolu- tion, we confess that this attribution of " livingness " to inor- ganic matter seems to us to strain the quality of livingness and to strQngthen the position of the mechanists, but it is to be presumed that life in the inorganic domain is also something that cannot be explained by physioo-chemical laws. So far we have seen no definition of this inorganic life, and are glad to pass with the lecturer to the consideration of the life of the organisms. The criteria of this life are given as the power of persisting and maintaining a complex specific structure, the capacities of growth, reproduction, and development, effective behaviour, registration of experiences and experiments, and variability. The first quality alone, the maintenance of a specific structure in spite of wear and tear and varying environ- ment, is a profound mystery, seeming to many inexplicable by the known laws of physics and chemistry, and still less do these laws suffice to explain the remaining attributes.

Having satisfied himself and, we think, most of his readers that the mechanistic view is not a satisfactory explanation of vital activity, Professor Thomson approaches the problem of the relation between body and mind, and leaves the reader to decide according to his inclination- between the soul-theory, the theory of psychical-monism which holds that the conscious process is the only reality, and the two-aspect theory that life is the only. reaiity,.having a subjective and an objective aspect. Whatever conclusion be reached on this question; the all-im- portant point is the pervasiveness of "mentality" in the realm of organisms.

The second volume is devoted to a consideration of evolution, and we are introduced to the sociosphere or Kingdom of Man. The continuity of evolution, a continuity with epoch-making creative steps, is described and insisted on. To justify the belief in God, efforts have been made to show gaps in the continuity of Nature, but the author quotes Professor 0. J. Blewett as saying :-

" Once you shatter the continuity of Nature, you shatter more than Materialism. You shatter the possibility of all science whatever. You open up the gulf of universal scepticism, and materialism disappears in it, it is true, but along with it will disappear Theism and Theology."

The whole subject is clearly and sympathetically handled, and if it bristles with difficulties, and some of the explanations, such as the idea of the germ-cell experimenting in self-expres- sion, seem unconvincing, we must remember that the scientific study of evolution has been of comparatively shortduration ; but the lecturer would have us direct our attention to the insurgence of organic life and the purposiveness of the evolutionary process. Surely the psalmist has spoken truly ; and if, in the words of the lecturer : " From the intrinsic order and intelligibility of Nature, which the rise of the magnificent scientific edifice proves, we may not be logically permitted to make a transcendent inference to an Omniscient Creator, but it is in that way the heart of man points," the heart is a true guide.