Life and Matter: A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's "Riddle of the Universe"

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…