The Mind of the Molecule

I

THE modern era may be known in history as the age of unity. United States and Leagues of Nations tend toward political unity. Trades-unions, agricultural blocs, and capitalists’ combines tend toward economic unity. Our public-school system and the International Institute of Education tend toward educational unity; and we are tending toward social unity in our Federation of Women’s Clubs. Our Foreign Missions’ Conference and our Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations tend toward religious unity; and scientific unity is fostered by our National Research Councils and our Associations for the Advancement of Science. Is it any wonder then that in the realm of thought we may observe this same tendency, that the old schisms between science and religion, between philosophy and theology, should be rapidly disappearing, and that we should find ourselves gravitating toward a common concept of the unity of the universe?

Science has been labeled, if not libeled, as being godless, and in direct conflict with religion. But those who speak thus lose sight of certain definitions: ‘Man is a religious animal,’ and ‘Religion is seeking after God.’ Some people find their God while kneeling at the side of a departing friend; others while kneeling before an altar in a spacious room lighted by flickering candles and the dim daylight penetrating stained-glass windows. The scientist, while looking for his God perhaps in memory or in man-made mausoleums, searches also in the open sanctuary of God’s creation. Is he the less religious for so doing? Three thousand years ago a Hindu sage wrote: ‘They who see but one in all the changing manifestations of the universe, unto them belongs Eternal Truth — unto none else, unto none else.’

Moses and Jesus taught the unity of God and man in their figurative conceptions of fatherhood and brotherhood. Churchmen, less wise than they, have since endeavored to emphasize further this concept of the godliness of man by declaring the ungodliness of the rest of nature. In attempting to establish the unity of man with the divine, they have sought to break the unity of man with the rest of the material universe; they have forgotten to ‘consider the lilies.’ In adopting the assertion that ‘God created man in his own image,’ they have insinuated that God made the rest of the universe in the image of someone else.

It has been left for science in recent years to reëstablish the unity of the universe by accumulating evidence as to the similitude of the living and the lifeless, of the vegetable and the animal, of the humble beast and the human being. In establishing this unity of man with the rest of nature, the Church has feared that science would break the union between man and the divine, But does it not strengthen, rather than weaken, this union? Is it not time that both factions stopped their quarrels and clasped hands under the common conception of the unity of the universe? Is it not time that the two work hand in hand: the churches continuing to reveal the truths of nature, new and old, and persuading their communicants to live in conformity with these truths; and the scientist proceeding with his business of discovering new truths?

In the study of the universe of God’s creation, the scientist finds a continual state of change; but in this change he finds no time or place at which a new something has been interjected. The raw materials, all of them, must, if the scientist is logical, be conceived of as existing from the first. The so-called new things which have appeared are simply rearrangements and interactions of the old, and not afterthoughts of the Creator, as if He had forgotten something in the beginning. We may believe, if we wish, that matter was created from energy, and that life was created from matter; but what we mean by creation in this sense is interaction and reorganization of one to form the other and not an existens de novo. If this is indeed the case, then we ought to be able to trace an almost unbroken series of intergradations back from man, the highest form of life on the earth to-day, to the units of energy at the bottom of the scale; and in this free energy we should find all the qualities from which derive the other types of existence.

The evidences of intergradation of man with the higher animals are obvious, but too extensive to be given space in this brief article. We recognize such a bond of union from the first, when we divide the objects of nature into the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms. Dr. W. W. Keen, the eminent Philadelphia surgeon, has just published a book, entitled I Believe in God and in Evolution, in which he has brought together some of the most striking evidences that have come to his attention as to the marked degree of similarity between man and the higher animals.

The animal kingdom presents an almost continuous series of transitions from the top to the bottom. Between this kingdom and the vegetable kingdom, the break is even less distinct than that between certain groups of animals themselves. In fact, if we examine carefully we shall find that the break between the animal and vegetable kingdoms cannot be found at all.

One botanist has recently defined a plant as ‘an organism possessing chlorophyll [the green pigment of plants] or descended from chlorophyllpossessing ancestors.’ But how do we know what the ancestors of an organism possessed ? May it not be that the ancestors of animals as well at one time possessed chlorophyll?

Plants are frequently said to differ from animals in that they do not move from place to place, are inflexible, have no system of blood-circulation, no nervous system, and no sensitivity or mentality. On the other hand, plants are said to possess the ability to manufacture their own food, they have cellulose cell-walls, and their cells divide by cell plate rather than by furrowing. But if each of these distinctions be considered separately, no one of them holds as a diagnostic characteristic.

Many microscopic plants have the ability of locomotion by swimming, and all plants except the very highest group are motile at a certain stage in their life-history. One can hardly say that plants are inflexible as contrasted with animals, if one compares the seaweeds snapping back and forth along the rocky coast with the sea urchins, barnacles, and clams lying just below tide level. Plants have a circulatory system, as do animals, and also a line of communication for impulses, corresponding to a nervous system. Moreover, practically all substances which are found in plants are found also in some animals; and the same is true of all processes, with the possible exception of food-manufacture. Finally, the degree of sensitivity of plants is equal to, and in some respects surpasses, that of animals; and there is as good basis for assuming the existence of mind in one case as in the other.

Food-manufacture is not accomplished by all plants; and most plants that manufacture food can do it for only a portion of their lives. If we find that an organism manufactures its own food, we may be quite sure that it is a plant; but if not, it may be either a plant or an animal. What then is the distinction between plants and animals?

It will not be satisfactory to say that plants are those organisms which manufacture their own food, and all other organisms are animals. Accordingly, the Indian pipe growing in the woods, with its white or blackened stem, leaves, and flowers, would be an animal. Also dodders, mushrooms, moulds, and mildews would be animals. In all these cases the structure of the organism is so nearly like that of certain green plants that they must all be included in the plant kingdom. We may say, then, that plants are those organisms which possess chlorophyll, or closely resemble in structure organisms which do possess chlorophyll. But what then shall we do with the bacteria, the slime moulds, the flagellates, and the dinoflagellates? Are they animals, or are they plants? To this question the modern scientist is forced to answer, ‘I do not know.’ They mark the transitional forms between the two kingdoms; and not only is there just one line of transitional forms, but the gap is bridged in many places. All life on the earth, then, is one and indivisible.

II

When we turn to the generally recognized distinction between the living and the lifeless, the question arises whether there is not here also a similar series of transitional forms, among which it is impossible to draw a line and definitely state that those on one side are living and those on the other are lifeless. It appears that there are four possible bases of distinction between these two; namely, structure, function, composition, and behavior.

The structural distinctions between living and nonliving things may be included in the term ‘cell.’ A cell might be defined as a body of more or less uniform, definite shape and size, consisting of an enveloping layer (the plasma membrane), and an internal liquid (the cytoplasm), within which are two kinds of special organs (the nucleus and vacuoles). However, according to this definition it could not be said that one of the lowest groups of plants, the blue-green algæ, have cells. They have no nuclei. It seems therefore that this item will have to be dropped from our definition.

Furthermore, some microorganisms consist of bodies which are not of more or less uniform, definite shape or size. Examples of such are the plasmodia of slime moulds, which flow about as liquids over stumps, sticks, or boards, in very irregular masses, often climbing against the force of gravity. Our definition of a cell, then, will have to be abbreviated still further so that it becomes ‘a body consisting of a plasma membrane and cytoplasm.'

As the study of microörganisms progresses, however, it seems that even this simple definition of a cell is not sufficiently inclusive. There are certain organisms which seem to pass a part of their lives in a more or less purely liquid state. Here may be included certain bacteria with their symplastic stage, the malarial organism passing through a part of its lifecycle as a ‘plasmodium’; and, finally, certain fungi are believed by some botanists to pass at times into a mycoplasm phase. If all living things are composed of cells, then these liquids must be cells, and we shall have to drop the words ‘body’ and ‘plasma membrane’ from our definition, and say that cells are simply liquids, that is, that they have no structure. With this any structural difference between the living and the nonliving disappears.

This distinction is still further obliterated by the study of the so-called filterable viruses. To them are attributed the causes of the mosaic diseases of potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco, and other crop plants, and also of hog cholera and Texas fever in animals, and of measles, scarlet fever, infantile paralysis, and smallpox in man. These viruses seem to be organisms which pass their entire existence in a liquid state, having apparently no structural features at all; and yet they behave in the same manner as parasitic microorganisms of known cellular structure.

Between these filterable viruses and the enzymes no difference in structure is known, and very little, if any, difference in behavior. Enzymes are substances which originate only in living things, but they may exist and operate outside of them. They accomplish the processes of digestion and other chemical changes associated with life.

One of the principal theories of enzyme action is that enzymes are colloids. Colloids have no necessary connection with life, either in origin, existence, or behavior. They are simply definite aggregates of molecules of either organic or inorganic substances. These molecules are in turn composed of atoms. Our structural series from the living to the lifeless, then, would be: cells; plasmodia; mycoplasm, or symplastic stages; filterable viruses; enzymes; colloids; organic molecules; inorganic molecules; atoms. Can anyone draw a line on the basis of structure, and separate this series into two parts, the living and the lifeless?

In like manner there seems to be no difference between the living and the lifeless on the basis of chemical composition. It was once supposed that living things were composed of a single chemical compound, known as protoplasm, which existed nowhere else in nature. It is now generally recognized that protoplasm is simply a mixture of water and salts and various organic compounds, all of which may exist outside of living things. Every chemical element that is found in living things occurs outside of them; and there is every reason to believe that every compound that is found in living things not only exists outside of life, but will probably some day be found to be formed without the aid of living matter.

One of the most fundamental processes in life is the decomposition of food, releasing energy. This process is, however, very similar to the burning of fuel. Both are cases of oxidation; both release energy; the foods used in both are the same, and the products are identical. It is true that the intermediate steps may be in some cases different, but there are no intermediate steps taking place in organisms which seem to be impossible elsewhere.

The manufacture of food may be regarded as next in importance, if not of equal significance. This has proved the most difficult process of all to imitate in the laboratory; and yet the researches of Emil Fischer, Stoklasa, Ewart, and a number of other biological chemists since the beginning of the present century have at last even here been crowned with success. As yet the amount formed in these experiments is almost infinitesimally small; but the hope which this work has aroused is sufficient to cause the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to go on record at its Boston meeting last December as convinced that the field of photosynthesis offers perhaps the most promising and important line of research for the immediate future.

Other chemical changes which occur in plants and animals can apparently be accomplished outside of them. It thus appears that modern science has slowly come to a realization that there are no chemical processes strictly peculiar to living things. It has long recognized that such was the case with the physical processes: absorption, conduction, and secretion. There remains, however, the process of growth, which has long been heralded as the great distinguishing feature that separates living things from the mineral kingdom.

Growth consists of three phases: cell division, cell enlargement, cell differentiation. Each of these may be imitated in nonliving matter. Cell division has been exemplified by Lehmann with liquid crystals, which divide and multiply much as do cells of bacteria. Furthermore, all the various stages of complicated nuclear division have been reproduced by Leduc and others as diffusion phenomena in nonliving colloids.

Cell enlargement in nonliving matter may be well shown by the socalled Traube cell, named after its discoverer. This Traube cell is made in various ways, as by dropping a crystal of copper sulphate into a solution of potassium ferrocyanide. A cell-like structure is formed, having a membrane and an internal cell sap, while the crystal is comparable to a nucleus. This artificial cell will enlarge and take on various forms simulating mushrooms, mosses, and various lower animals, just as the living cell enlarges and takes on various forms according to the surrounding conditions. Cell differentiation simply means internal structural change. Dr. E. J. Allen has recently reported the production of artificial cells which not only divide and enlarge but also develop swimming organs and feeding habits.

III

Physiologically, anatomically, and chemically, then, we can find no distinction between the living and the nonliving. It now remains to be seen whether there is a psychical difference. It is generally conceded that animals have minds which approach more or less closely those of men. In an earlier paper in the Atlantic, entitled ‘The Psychology of Plants,'¹ there were brought together certain evidences that vegetable life may be interpreted as having associated with it a something akin to that phase of human existence which we call mind.

It is now my purpose to go a step further, and to inquire whether there may not be a basis for assuming that the molecule also possesses a mind. If we believe that the forces of the nonliving world are all simple mechanical forces, which can be readily understood by human beings, then is it not logical to assume, as do the mechanists, that the potent factors in the behavior of plants, the lower animals, and even of man, are likewise simple mechanical forces? If, on the other hand, we believe that mind is a potent factor in man’s existence and behavior, should we not also expect to find it in all other living things, and not only in the living, but in the whole round of nature as well? The mind of man may be more powerful than that of the May apple, but if one has a mind, has not the other also? There may be a stronger mind in the May apple than in the molecule, but is not the difference one of degree and not of kind?

One of the functions claimed for the mind is that it aids the organism in returning to a condition of equilibrium. It is pointed out that a return to a condition of equilibrium is pleasurable and a departure from it is painful. Let us consider, for example, a man who has been pinned down by a falling timber. He is suffering great pain, because the pressure of the timber on his body is greater than the turgor of his cells. By exerting all his muscular energy, he is able to extricate himself, whereupon the pain ceases, because he has returned his body to a condition of equilibrium. We say that the thing which caused him to behave so as to extricate himself was the psychical feeling of pain.

Now let us consider a number of molecules of helium in a bag enclosed by an impermeable cover and located on the surface of the earth. The molecules of helium are not in a condition of equilibrium. Should we not assume that they feel pain, and that the rise of the balloon is a pleasurable experience for them, in that it involves a return to a condition of equilibrium? We might go so far as to say that the thing which caused the rise of the balloon was the painful feeling experienced by the molecules of helium. But we know that the helium is operated upon by physical forces, and we are likely to attribute its behavior to physical causes. We know, on the other hand, that the man has a psychical experience, and we are therefore given to attributing his behavior to that experience. Do we not know that physical laws, as well as the psychical, operate in the case of the man? In man we recognize physical and psychical experiences as concomitants of each other. Why may we not assume that the same is true of isolated molecules?

The physicist and the chemist may say that they have no need of presupposing mind, or even a vitalistic principle, in the study of the forces and reactions with which they have to deal. The botanist may also resent the imposition of such factors, which are liable further to obscure his dim vision into the intricacies of the vegetable world. Loeb and his followers, in their consideration of the life of the lower animals, see no need of anything other than a purely mechanistic conception of life, and are likewise satisfied to deal with man in the same way. Man is subject, according to their theory, to the same physical and chemical laws and principles as are all other masses of matter, and to such laws and principles alone. The mechanist assumes that mind plays no part whatsoever in human behavior, but is simply an interested observer.

Opposed to the mechanistic view is the mystical, or vitalistic one. This involves the concept of the potency of the mind or soul of man, and of the existence throughout living nature of a vitalistic principle or entity not existent in the nonliving. Vitalism maintains the importance of the mind of man, while denying its existence in the molecule; mechanism maintains the omnipotence of physical laws in the realm of the molecule, while denying the potency of mind in man. While the pendulum of modern science has been recently swinging from mysticism far in the direction of mechanism (so far, in fact, that grave fear has been expressed as to the welfare of our social order, when one contemplates what will happen when the man in the street begins to realize what the ‘ highbrows ' are really thinking), yet there is the possibility of a swing back to a more rational point of view on the part of the ‘highbrows,’ which, it seems certain, will, to say the least, markedly decrease the intensity of the impending shock. It is not my purpose to champion the mechanistic conception as opposed to the mystical, or the mystical as opposed to the mechanistic. But it does seem that there is no reason why they should not agree upon the universal existence of mind in association with matter. If mind is simply a nonparticipating bystander in human behavior, I must contend that it is also present, though nonparticipating, in purely chemical behavior. And if, on the other hand, mind does have a directing force in human affairs, it seems reasonable to expect that it exists, and may perhaps have a directing effect in the realm of molecules, atoms, and electrons. It thus appears that mechanism and mysticism may agree on the proposition that mind is a property of matter. Then we may be as mechanistic as Loeb, if we choose to believe that mind plays no rôle in human affairs; or as mystical as Sir Oliver Lodge, if we choose to regard mind as the principal factor in existence.

The danger to our social order, as I see it, is not in either the mechanistic or the mystical idea of the universe, but rather in an attempt to maintain a dual standard for molecules and man. The scientist has no right to regard man and the lower animals, on the one hand, as subject to the mystical laws of the mind, and the molecules and electrons, on the other, as subject to the physical laws of matter. Nature is one and indivisible. All differences in nature are differences of degree and not of kind.

It is said that mind steps in when there is a dilemma presenting more than one possible course of procedure, and that mind constitutes an urge, a will to power, which causes the organism to adopt one course to the exclusion of the others. Many possibilities open out before the graduates of the high schools in this state: apprenticeships in numerous walks of life; higher education in normal trade, military, professional, and liberal lines. At no time in our lives, perhaps, could we say that willful mind plays a greater part than in the choice of our life-work. The numerous mistakes apparently made in this choice, and the recent movement for vocational guidance with a view to avoiding these mistakes, only emphasize the feeling that it is a human conscious effort. The result is that about the same number of students come to the State University from our high schools in each successive year, or at least that the rate of increase is about uniform.

If a large pan of water be exposed to ordinary air, the surface of that water will be made up of a layer of myriads of molecules of water. During each successive second there will be approximately the same number of molecules passing off from the liquid into the air. There is for each molecule in that surface-layer of water a dilemma. It can either remain in the liquid or pass of! into the air. It happens that about the same number decide to go off every successive minute.

But, you say, when I use the word ‘decide’ in connection with the molecules, that I am giving a psychical explanation for their behavior; whereas, in fact, it is purely physical. My reply would be that, when you use the word ‘decide’ in connection with the highschool graduates, you are giving a purely psychical explanation of their behavior. Are not physical and psychical phenomena present in both cases? If an environmental condition, as, for example, the temperature, is changed, the number of molecules given off into the air will change accordingly. Just so, if the legislature appropriates more money to the University, more students will come, perhaps because the taxes will be higher, and the farmer will feel more than ever that he should be getting his money’s worth. So that by a change of environment also the attendance of the University is affected. Our difficulty lies in trying to apply a psychical explanation to human behavior and a physical explanation to molecular behavior. Why should we not consider that both operate in each case?

Molecules have certain properties, as weight, size, speed, color, and method of combination. Why not add another property to the list, namely, mind? Is it not better to consider mind as a property of matter than as a separate distinct entity, which parallels matter, interacts with it, controls it, is controlled by it, or evolves from it?

Many examples may be found of the parallelism of psychical phenomena in man and of changes in matter. Among the chemical elements certain phenomena simulate dual and dissociated personality. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and their like have counterparts in the lifeless world. Tin, a simple indivisible element, has two forms, the stable and the metastable. Under certain conditions the stable form is a powder; the metastable is the common metallic tin. By a shock — that is, heating — the stable form may be changed suddenly into the metastable, and then during a long period of rest the metastable gradually goes back into the stable form. The one changes into the other only if a nucleus of the latter is present; and, as in hypnosis, at a certain critical temperature both forms may exist in considerable quantity together.

Mind comes most forcefully into play in the interaction of an organism with its environment, and finds its greatest development, perhaps, when that environment consists of other organisms, in which case we witness the interaction of mind with mind. Is it not, then, in the interaction of molecule with molecu le that we may expect to find the property of matter which may be called mind most in evidence? Freud has shown that the most extreme case of interaction of mind with mind is in the phenomena of sex, which he regards as the most fundamental of all our instincts. We should then examine into the occurrence of sex in organisms, and the possibility of its existence in the nonliving world, with a view to further binding the two together.

When our normal modern knighterrant caresses his lady fair as he rises from the settee at ten o’clock on Sunday evening, we say that there wrells up within him the overpowering emotion of love. But when a sperm swims directly from the male sex-organ of a fern to the female sex-organ, and finds there the egg, we say that it is because there wells up within the female sexorgan a quantity of malic acid. Sperms have the characteristic of swimming in the direction of higher concentrations of this substance. Thus for vegetable sexual attraction we have a physical explanation; for human sexual attraction we have a psychical explanation.

But let us see if there are not in each case both physical and psychical aspects to the phenomenon. Would the same overpowering emotion of love have welled up in the young man’s heart had he met the maiden, mop in hand, just after tracking across her clean kitchen floor in his last round of delivering groceries on a sultry summer Saturday afternoon? How much of his feeling on Sunday evening is due to a psychical urge, and how much to the various visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactual, and thermal stimuli of the two hours preceding, we perhaps can never tell. How much of human matchmaking is to be attributed to perfumes, plaits, powder, paint, Paderewski on the pianola, and pineapple parfaits, to say nothing of lolling eyelids, lisping lips, and limpid relaxation? That is a question for the consideration of the Cythereologists.

Is it not true, however, that there are certain physical concomitants to human love-affairs? Does not every human psychical experience have also its concomitant physical process? Is it not likewise true that with every human physical process there is a concomitant psychical experience, either conscious or subconscious? Observing in the lower animals and plants physical phenomena similar to those of our own human experience, have we any right to assume that there is not also a psychical concomitant? When we see a sperm swimming along toward the sex-organ of a fern, have we any more right to assume that it is not just as happy as was the farmer boy whistling his way along the cool country road toward the home of his sweetheart? And if in the fern, why not in all living things?

Sexuality exists down to the very bottom of plant and animal life. Even some of the simplest forms, the bacteria, have been recently shown by Löhnis to have a form of sexuality. In the onecelled animal, Paramœcium, there is a conjugation of two individuals in sexual reproduction; likewise in certain one-celled plants, as the diatoms, the same process occurs. Structurally the two cells that fuse appear just alike; but it has been demonstrated by Blakeslee, in certain of the moulds, that, although the two cells may be just alike in form, yet they are really physiologically different from each other. He refers to them as plus and minus, rather than male and female, for the reason that the plant which he calls plus never unites with another plus plant; but a plus connects only with a minus, and a minus only with a plus. It thus appears that in sexual fusion the two fusing cells are in no cases exactly alike.

Let us now consider whether there exists in the nonliving world a phenomenon comparable to sex in the living. In colloids, perhaps the highest form of nonliving material, adsorption brings together two bodies in closer proximity than under any other conditions; so close, in fact, that they give birth to a new body not exactly like either one. This statement of what happens in adsorption will do equally well for the essential features of sexual reproduction in living things.

Going below the level of colloids, we find that many chemical compounds consist of two parts, plus and minus, or positive and negative. In many instances the positive and negative unite to form the compound with great readiness, as when hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) leap together in the presence of an electric spark to form water. But the separation or divorce of hydrogen from oxygen in this compound is accomplished only with great difficulty. Other substances, as salts, may be divorced every time they get into a little (hot) water. This dissociation into ions is, in fact, a rather close approximation to sexuality. There are positive and negative ions; two positives can never combine, neither can two negatives; a positive ion combines only with a negative one. Some ions are amphoteric, that is, they are positive on one side and negative on the other, just like hermaphrodites among plants and animals. In addition ions show a strong preference of mates. While the hydrogen ion ( + ) and the sulphate ion ( —) unite with each other readily, if in a solution by themselves, yet, if copper (+) and hydroxyl ( —) ions are also present, the hydrogen ion always selects the hydroxyl as its mate, and leaves the sulphate to the copper.

Oxygen is apparently much sought after by the other elements as a mate; in fact, they practically all form compounds with it alone. It is known that twenty per cent of the atmosphere is oxygen, eighty per cent of the hydrosphere (natural waters), and fifty per cent of the lithosphere (rocks and soil). Assuming then that the atmosphere and hydrosphere are equal in mass, it may be concluded that about one half of the molecules of the earth are oxygen. In many species of plants and animals the males and females are about equal in number, as is the case in man. May not oxygen be looked upon as one of the sexes among chemical elements, and all of the other ninety-two elements as belonging to the other sex?

The question then arises: is oxygen male or female? In the human species man has a great diversity of occupations, while woman is the more conservative and conventional (in occupation, if not in dress). Oxygen atoms are all alike, while the rest of the atoms of the earth are of many different kinds. Other reasons for considering oxygen as female are: oxygen is always negative; and it is also perhaps the most active of all the elements.

Many unions of atoms are simple marriages, as in the case of the oxides: CO, Bat), CaO, etc. There are some double weddings, as H2O2; some cases of bigamy, as C02; but there are few sheiks with their harems. The worst case of this type, in fact, is 0s04. But, on the other hand, there is biandry, H20; and, what is far worse, many situations in which the husbands far outnumber the wives, as C40H5602. Then there are some David and Jonathan combinations, as NaCl or NaHgX.

The physical chemist thinks of atoms as combining to form ions, of ions uniting in pairs to form molecules, of molecules associated together to form colloidal particles, and of colloids associated together to form cells. We have shown that there is perhaps a basis for the evolution of sex in the phenomenon of adsorption in colloids. Below this level we have seen that molecules constitute each a partnership of two ions, a positive and a negative. Recent theories of chemistry maintain that the atom itself is composed of two parts of opposite sign. Finally, leaving the realm of matter, we find in the units of energy, also, the semblance of sex. Here, in connection with the electrons there are positive and negative charges. When a positive and a negative charge, from opposite poles of a static machine, meet in mid-air, is that not as true a case of ‘sparking’ as when the policeman meets Bridget at the kitchen door?

All this, you will say, is terribly overdrawn and far-fetched, and against this contention I have not much to say. Is it not, however, true that the fact that we are able to overdraw it at all means that there is an underlying unity of the universe? One form of existence grades into another imperceptibly, so that in nature there are no such things as categories; such exist only in the minds of human beings who are trying to understand nature.

If then we abandon our selfish conception of mind as the property solely of man, and adopt the broader idea of mind as a property of matter, we have the basis, born of scientific investigation, for satisfying one of the great desires of the human soul. Scientists have long recognized the immortality of the forces of nature by their law of the conservation of energy. They have defended the concept of the immortality of the substances of nature through the law of the conservation of matter. And now we can see a basis for the immortality of the soul, through the law of the conservation of mind. If the mind of a human being is the net result of the psychical experiences of each of the atoms and molecules that compose his body, then mind or soul does not cease with death. In the case of mind as of matter, death must be regarded as simply a transformation, not a cessation. Thus we have a scientific basis for a belief in the immortality of the soul. Thus is our concept of the Eternal broadened by a knowledge of the unity and immortality of the universe through the laws of the conservation of energy, matter, and mind.