influences may flow into the physico-chemical system, even if there be
none in regard to the domain of "vital" phenomena. And we should require
to find out through what parallelistic or abruptly idealistic system the
"without" was done away with in this case. For if a transcendental basis,
or reverse side, or cause of things, be admitted--even if only in the form
of our materialistic popular metaphysics (the "substance" of Haeckel's
"world-riddle")--then a "without," from which primarily the cosmic system
with its constant sum of matter and energy is explained, is also admitted,
and it is difficult to see why it should have exhausted itself in this
single effort.

Criticisms of the Mechanistic Theory of Life.

The course of the mechanistic theory of life has been surprisingly similar
to that of its complement, the theory of the general evolution of the
organic world. The two great doctrines of the schools, Darwinism on the
one hand, the mechanical interpretation of life on the other, are both
tottering, not because of the criticism of outsiders, but of specialists
within the schools themselves. And the interest which religion has in this
is the same in both cases: the transcendental nature of things, the
mysterious depth of appearance, which these theories denied or obscured,
become again apparent. The incommensurableness and mystery of the world,
which are, perhaps, even more necessary to the very life of religion than
the right to regard it teleologically, reassert themselves afresh in the
all-too-comprehensible and mathematically-formulated world, and
re-establish themselves, notwithstanding obstinate and persistent attempts
to do away with them. This is perhaps to the advantage of both natural
science and religion: to the advantage of religion because it can with
difficulty co-exist with the universal dominance of the mathematical way
of looking at things; to the advantage of natural science because, in
giving up the one-sidedness of the purely quantitative outlook, it does
not give up its "foundations," its "right to exist," but only a _petitio
principii_ and a prejudice that compelled it to exploit nature rather than
to explain it, and to prescribe its ways rather than to seek them out.

The reaction from the one-sided mechanical theories shows itself in many
different ways and degrees. It may, according to the individual
naturalist, affect the theory as a whole, or only certain parts of it, or
only parti