or its
contained fluid, is one chemical compound; epithelium is another;
mesoblast is a third. We want an explanation of the identical behaviour
of the first with _either_ of the two latter; and this should be borne
in mind--that the reaction is not a mere matter of "clearing" of a
tissue as the histologist would clear his section by oil-of-cloves or
other reagent, but of the construction of a different type of
cell--epithelial, not connective tissue.

It certainly follows that there must be some superior, at least widely
different, agency at work than one of a purely chemical
character--something which transcends chemical operations. This is
precisely what the Vitalist claims. No one will fail to award praise to
any attempts to explain the phenomena of Nature, whether within or
without any system. Loeb's book sets out to do a great deal more--to
explain what it does not explain--the Organism as a Whole, and thus to
give a philosophical explanation of man. It even claims to afford hints
for a rule for his life, at least so we gather from the Preface, where,
alluding to "that group of freethinkers, including d'Alembert, Diderot,
Holbach and Voltaire," the author tells us that they "first dared to
follow the consequences of a mechanistic science--incomplete as it then
was--to the rules of human conduct, and thereby laid the foundation of
that spirit of tolerance, justice, and gentleness which was the hope of
our civilisation until it was buried under the wave of homicidal emotion
which has swept through the world." On which it is surely reasonable to
ask how a chemical reaction can learn so to alter itself as to exhibit
"tolerance, justice, and gentleness," attributes which it had not
previously possessed? Such claims of this and other writers, who would
find in the laws of Nature as formulated to-day (forgetful that their
formulae may to-morrow be cast into the furnace) a rule of life as well
as a full explanation of the cosmos, resemble in their lack of base an
inverted pyramid.

IV. SCIENCE IN "BONDAGE"

Amongst the numerous taunts which are cast at the Catholic Church there
is none more frequently employed, nor, it may be added, more generally
believed, nor more injurious to her reputation amongst outsiders--even
with her own less-instructed children themselves at times--than the
allegation which declares that where the Church has full sway, science
cannot flourish, can scarcely in fact exist, and that the