his explanation were possible, the "law" would also be explained, and
would therefore become superfluous. From this and similar examples we can
learn at what point "explanation" begins to replace description, namely,
when processes resolve themselves into simpler processes from the
concurrence of which they arise. This is exactly what natural science
desires to bring about, and what naturalism hopes ultimately to succeed
in, thereby solving the riddle of existence.

But this kind of reduction to simpler terms only becomes "explanation"
when these simpler terms are themselves clear and intelligible and not
merely simple; that is to say, when we can immediately see why the simpler
process occurs, and by what means it is brought about, when the question
as to the "why" is no longer necessary, because, on becoming aware of the
process, we immediately and directly perceive that it is a matter of
course, indisputable, and requiring no proof. If this is not the case, the
reduction to simpler terms has been misleading. We have only replaced one
unintelligibility by another, one description by another, and so simply
pushed back the whole problem. Naturalism supposes that by this gradual
pushing back the task will at least become more and more simple, until at
last a point is reached where the riddle will solve itself, because
description becomes equivalent to explanation. This final stage is
supposed to be found in the forces of attraction and repulsion, with which
the smallest similar particles of matter are equipped. Out of the
endlessly varied correlations of these there arise all higher forms of
energy and all the combinations which make up more complex phenomena.

But in reality this does not help us at all. For now we are definitely
brought face to face with the quite unanswerable question, How, from all
this homogeneity and unity of the ultimate particles and forces, can we
account for the beginnings of the diversity which is so marked a
characteristic of this world? Whence came the causes of the syntheses to
higher unities, the reasons for the combination into higher resultants of
energy?

But even apart from that, it is quite obvious that we have not yet reached
the ultimate point. For can "attraction," influence at a distance, _vis a
fronte_, be considered as a fact which is in itself clear? Is it not
rather the most puzzling fundamental riddle we can be called upon to
explain? Assuredly. And therefore the attempt is