the
borderland between the material and the immaterial. We may fancy that it
is here that the psychical effects its entrance into the physical--that
spirit weds matter--that the creative energy kindles the spark we call
vitality. At any rate, vitality evidently begins in that inner world of
atoms and molecules; but whether as the result of their peculiar and
very complex compounding or as the cause of the compounding--how are we
ever to know? Is it not just as scientific to postulate a new principle,
the principle of vitality, as to postulate a new process, or a new
behavior of an old principle? In either case, we are in the world of the
unverifiable; we take a step in the dark. Most of us, I fancy, will
sympathize with George Eliot, who says in one of her letters: "To me the
Development Theory, and all other explanations of processes by which
things came to be, produce a feeble impression compared with the mystery
that lies under the processes."

V

SCIENTIFIC VITALISM

I

All living bodies, when life leaves them, go back to the earth from
whence they came. What was it in the first instance that gathered their
elements from the earth and built them up into such wonderful
mechanisms? If we say it was nature, do we mean by nature a physical
force or an immaterial principle? Did the earth itself bring forth a
man, or did something breathe upon the inert clay till it became a
living spirit?

As life is a physical phenomenon, appearing in a concrete physical
world, it is, to that extent, within the domain of physical science, and
appeals to the scientific mind. Physical science is at home only in the
experimental, the verifiable. Its domain ends where that of philosophy
begins.

The question of how life arose in a universe of dead matter is just as
baffling a question to the ordinary mind, as how the universe itself
arose. If we assume that the germs of life drifted to us from other
spheres, propelled by the rays of the sun, or some other celestial
agency, as certain modern scientific philosophers have assumed, we have
only removed the mystery farther away from us. If we assume that it
came by spontaneous generation, as Haeckel and others assume, then we
are only cutting a knot which we cannot untie. The god of spontaneous
generation is as miraculous as any other god. We cannot break the causal
sequence without a miracle. If something came from nothing, then there
is not only the end of the problem, but al