Chapter I: Front Matter

=Life and Matter=

=Recent Works by Sir Oliver Lodge=

SCHOOL TEACHING AND SCHOOL REFORM. A Course of Four Lectures on School Curricula and Methods delivered to Secondary Teachers and Teachers in Training at Birmingham during February 1905. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s.

WILLIAMS & NORGATE, London.

EASY MATHEMATICS: Chiefly Arithmetic. Being a Collection of Hints to Teachers, Parents, self-taught Students, and Adults, and containing a Summary or Indication of most things in Elementary Mathematics useful to be known. By Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S., D.Sc., Principal of the University of Birmingham. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d.

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited, London.

Life and Matter

A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's
"Riddle of the Universe"

By
Sir Oliver Lodge

The expansion of a Presidential Address
to the Birmingham and Midland Institute

_SECOND EDITION _

London
Williams & Norgate
14 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden

1905

TO
JOHN HENRY MUIRHEAD
AND
MARY TALBOT MUIRHEAD
THE FRIENDS OF MANY NEEDING HELP
NOT IN PHILOSOPHY ALONE
THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED
IN MEMORY OF CHANDOLIN AND ST LUC 1904

"Materialistic monism is nowadays the working hypothesis of
every scientific explorer in every department, whatever other
beliefs or denials he may, more or less explicitly and more or
less consistently, superadd. Materialistic monism only becomes
false when put forward as a complete philosophy of the
universe, because it leaves out of sight the conditions of
human knowledge, which the special sciences may conveniently
disregard, but which a candid philosophy cannot ignore."

"The legitimate materialism of the sciences simply means
temporary and convenient abstraction from the cognitive
conditions under which there are 'facts' or 'objects' for us at
all; it is 'dogmatic materialism' which is metaphysics of the
bad sort."
D. G. Ritchie.

"Our metaphysics is really like many other sciences—only on the
threshold of genuine knowledge: God knows if it will ever get
further. It is not hard to see its weakness in much that it
undertakes. Prejudice is often found to be the mainstay of its
proofs. For this nothing is to blame but the ruling passion of
those who would fain extend human knowledge. They are anxious
to have a grand philosophy: but the desirable thing is, that it
should also be a sound one."
Kant.

Preface

This small volume is in form controversial, but in substance it has a more ambitious aim: it is intended to formulate, or perhaps rather to reformulate, a certain doctrine concerning the nature of man and the interaction between mind and matter. Incidentally it attempts to confute two errors which are rather prevalent:—

1. The notion that because material energy is constant in quantity,
therefore its transformations and transferences—which admittedly
constitute terrestrial activity—are not susceptible
of guidance or directive control.

2. The idea that the specific guiding power which we call "life" is
one of the forms of material energy, so that directly it
relinquishes its connection with matter other equivalent forms
of energy must arise to replace it.

The book is specially intended to act as an antidote to the speculative and destructive portions of Professor Haeckel's interesting and widely-read work, but in other respects it may be regarded less as a hostile attack than as a supplement—an extension of the more scientific portions of that work into higher and more fruitful regions of inquiry.

OLIVER LODGE.

University of Birmingham, _October 1905_.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I MONISM 1

II "THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE" 14

III THE DEVELOPMENT OF LIFE 41

IV MEMORANDA FOR WOULD-BE MATERIALISTS 60

V RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 71

VI MIND AND MATTER 100

VII PROFESSOR HAECKEL'S CONJECTURAL PHILOSOPHY 125

VIII HYPOTHESIS AND ANALOGIES CONCERNING LIFE 136

IX WILL AND GUIDANCE 152

X FURTHER SPECULATION AS TO THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE 179

LIFE AND MATTER