RESULTS OF THE NEW PHYSICS.--The reduction of knowable and tangible matter to intangible electricity or unknowable ether may not seem to be much of an advance from the point of view of those who are interested in establishing a spiritual theory of the universe. But electricity is a species of energy which can be expressed in terms of will--which is the only kind of energy that we are acquainted with at first hand. "What is objectively energy is subjectively will; or, in other words, manifested energy is the visibility of will."[69] And so far as the "unknowable" ether is concerned, it gives less scope to those powers of dogmatism, the exercise of which characterised scientists of the old materialistic school; and it is the habit of oracular pronouncements which does the harm, by rendering any intellectual or spiritual progress impossible. In any case, whatever be the substitute which is to replace the old theory, we may congratulate ourselves, with Professor J. S. Haldane, that "we have parted once for all with the notion of a real and self-existent Material universe; and we must remember where we now are."[70]
THE NEW BIOLOGY.--But if the results of the new physics have been disturbing to those who had hoped that materialism was a finally established theory, the results of recent biological research have been equally embarrassing to them. The anti-mechanistic trend of recent biological theory is only too evident. The organism is regarded no longer by the majority of biologists as fully explicable in terms of mechanics and chemistry. To quote Professor Haldane again, "The main outstanding fact is that the mechanistic account of the universe breaks down completely in connection with the phenomena of life.... In the case of life, the facts are inconsistent with the physical and chemical account of phenomena."[71]
The organism can no longer be regarded as even an extremely complex kind of machine; that word will not cover the facts, and biologists are compelled to look elsewhere for a less misleading terminology. To describe the organism as a machine, is to give to that word a very comprehensive connotation. For the organism is a machine different in kind from any that has been constructed by man; it is "a self-stoking, self-repairing, self-preservative, self-adjusting, self-increasing, self-producing engine."[72]