e clod underfoot to the
brain and consciousness of man without invoking something outside of,
and superior to, natural laws, is the question. For my own part I
content myself with the thought of some unknown and doubtless unknowable
tendency or power in the elements themselves--a kind of universal mind
pervading living matter and the reason of its living, through which the
whole drama of evolution is brought about.

This is getting very near to the old teleological conception, as it is
also near to that of Henri Bergson and Sir Oliver Lodge. Our minds
easily slide into the groove of supernaturalism and spiritualism because
they have long moved therein. We have the words and they mould our
thoughts. But science is fast teaching us that the universe is complete
in itself; that whatever takes place in matter is by virtue of the force
of matter; that it does not defer to or borrow from some other universe;
that there is deep beneath deep in it; that gross matter has its
interior in the molecule, and the molecule has its interior in the atom,
and the atom has its interior in the electron, and that the electron is
matter in its fourth or non-material state--the point where it touches
the super-material. The transformation of physical energy into vital,
and of vital into mental, doubtless takes place in this invisible inner
world of atoms and electrons. The electric constitution of matter is a
deduction of physics. It seems in some degree to bridge over the chasm
between what we call the material and the spiritual. If we are not
within hailing distance of life and mind, we seem assuredly on the road
thither. The mystery of the transformation of the ethereal, imponderable
forces into the vital and the mental seems quite beyond the power of the
mind to solve. The explanation of it in the bald terms of chemistry and
physics can never satisfy a mind with a trace of idealism in it.

The greater number of the chapters of this volume are variations upon a
single theme,--what Tyndall called "the mystery and the miracle of
vitality,"--and I can only hope that the variations are of sufficient
interest to justify the inevitable repetitions which occur. I am no more
inclined than Tyndall was to believe in miracles unless we name
everything a miracle, while at the same time I am deeply impressed with
the inadequacy of all known material forces to account for the phenomena
of living things.

That word of evil repute, materialism, is no lo