It is impossible to do more than briefly mention some
of the subjects discussed by the British Association since our last issue. The burning subject of the origin of life raised in Professor Schafer's Presidential address kept cropping up during the week, and on the whole the "scientific agnostics" had the best of the argument. Thus, in the discussion of "the Relation of Mind and Body" in the Physiological Section, Dr. Haldane, a moderate "Vitalist," while maintaining that they could never dispense with the physical or physiological account of man, frankly stated that from their very nature physical and mere physiological processes afforded no explanation of intelligent behaviour : while the President, Dr. Leonard Hill, went so far as to say that physiology got along best by leaving the question they had been discussing aside. The " Mechanists " and " Vitalists " had another great field day on Tuesday, when Professor Minchin propounded his theory that chromatin was the first basis of living things, and the debate resolved itself, in great measure, into a critical examination of Professor Schafer's address, in which the upholders of "biotic energy" and of the creation of synthetic life, monists, and metaphysicians all had their say, with the result, as one of the speakers put it, that they did not get much " forrarder " in regard to the solution of the problem.
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