Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/102

86 world, according to our author's view, is a realm of dead matter, purposeless chance, and mechanical law, showing in itself no evidence of an ordering intelligence. It is uncreate, indestructible, and of limitless extent, i.e., infinite in time and space. There is no void, but the material ether fills all. Modern science is supposed to have demonstrated this, though how science can show what there is beyond the visible stars or that the stars form the bounds of the infinite (?) universe is not explained. That there ever was or ever could be any question as to the nature of space, time, and matter is not so much as hinted.

In the organic world there is another element present besides the physical, i.e., Life, which is denominated hyperphysical and meta-physical. "The existence of spontaneous motion, coupled as it always is with directional power over mechanical forces, and with purposive activity, is a fact that cannot by any sane reason be identified with mechanics, or named mechanical. . . . The hyperphysical, therefore, is a fact, and this hyperphysical is mental, volitional, purposive. The essential identity of all living natural things, and the multiform interdependence and relation of all these hyperphysical existences point by the most incontrovertible logic to an organismal unity of source and being. Of course no Infinite or Omnipotent is gained by this road, but none such is desirable. We reach, however, a working and actual God, of very satisfying proportions and powers, and we are forever relieved of 'rigid law,' materialism, determinism, and all that" (pp. 53, 56). The God we see daily at work all over the earth is " primarily and essentially Life," and since every living being is instinct with purpose, wisdom, and intelligence, this deity is very happily named "Biologos" (p. 16). Biologos is "almost or quite" infinite in knowledge and benevolence, "but very far from omnipotence either physically or morally." He can work upon matter only through the cell of protoplasm. All the evils of existence are due to the intractable nature of the material world in which Biologos is laboring to incarnate himself, and especially to the overwhelming difficulties in securing the nutrition necessary to all living cells and organisms. It would be interesting to know how this theologico-biological process gets itself started, for we are told repeatedly that Biologos can act on matter only in and through cells and that cells always come from cells. Whether the cells are external, or whether the first came by chance, or whether Biologos once knew how to work directly on atoms and make cells but has now forgotten, his prophet does not tell us.