Printed by B. HERDER in Freiburg im Breisgau.

INTRODUCTION.

A few days ago the newspapers announced that Mr. Edi

son had declared himself a materialist. He had satisfied himself that the physico-chemical forces at work in the brain, with the resultant electrical effects, were sufficient to account for all the phenomena of conscious life in man. This was the first public intimation that the distinguished inventor had turned philosopher. He had previously been known as an ingenious contriver of useful mechanisms. He had invented the phonograph, megaphone, kinetoscope, and had introduced many important improvements in telegraphy. His success in bending the forces of Nature to his will had won him a deserved celebrity; he was recognised as an adept in the application of science to practical ends, if not in science itself. Such fame notwithstanding, his profession of materialism left the world wholly unperturbed. No believer saw in it a new menace to his faith; no unbeliever found in it a new justification of his unbelief. The incident passed with a tribute of comment from the press scantier than would be accorded to a horse race or a prize fight.

This attitude of the public mind seems to indicate a healthy spread of sober thought, a growing capacity to appreciate at their true value the pronouncements of "science" on the supreme problems of life.

The study of the inorganic and organic worlds leads men irresistibly to speculate on the ultimate causes of the phenomena they investigate. The necessity is imposed by an inherent tendency of thought. With every fresh advance this constraining impulse becomes more imperative. But progress along the lines of empirical research brings with it no new light on the issues of deepest import to man. The discoveries of chemistry have enabled us to substitute molecules, atoms, electrons for the elemental earth, air, fire, and water of the Greeks; but the problem of the constitution of matter has become only more perplexing for the change. In biology we have got down to the cell as the basal element in living structures; but vital activity in the cell is as mysterious and inexplicable as in the most complicated organisms; the cerebral movements which accompany the functions of mind have been, in some measure, determined; but this gives no new help towards an explanation of consciousness; in this respect the most accomplished physiologist has no more effective data at command than the man who knows only that we see by means of eyes and hear by means of ears. The question whether the universe is ordered on a preconceived plan is not brought nearer a solution by discoveries which merely multiply for us the elements constituting it; the question whether there is an immaterial soul in man is not elucidated by an increased knowledge of the complexities of structure and movement in the organism within which the phenomena of sensation and thought manifest themselves. In face of these problems the man of science and the man of normal human experience stand upon the same plane. In both the answer will be given by that spontaneous

process of inference which decides, for learned and unlearned alike, the urgent issues of life, and which is so largely influenced by the perfections or the defects of individual character. We may attempt a logical analysis of the process, endeavour to follow step by step the path which the mind has traversed with lightning speed. But whatever the result of this attempt, be it satisfactory or otherwise, the assent to the conclusion is not thereby affected. Doubt as to the correctness of an analysis of our own act of reasoning is one thing; doubt as to the validity of the inference itself is quite another.

It stands to the credit of the founders of modern science the master minds of the 17th and 18th Centuries that they had a salutary sense of the limitations of empirical methods. Their discoveries, which opened the way to all subsequent progress, did not interfere with their faith in God, or their belief in the spirituality and immortality of the human soul. If anything, their reverence for the Mind that reveals Itself in Nature grew more profound as their knowledge of natural phenomena became deeper. The more enlightened of their successors in the 19th Century have upheld their conception of Nature's God, and of man's place in Nature. This it is the purpose of Father Kneller's book to demonstrate. The thoroughness with which he has executed his task is obvious on every page; he has rendered a conspicuous service to Christianity and to Science.

Dublin, October 1910.

T. A. Finlay.