The Irish standard., 1911-01-21

that he is cropping in the dark" And
just what nature, as he conceives it,
is and how nature" made us; nature
did it all,'' for we think he would find
more trouble in attempting to solve
this mystery than he has met with
as yet in his fifty years of work.
After doing away with God, let us
the human will and the human soul,
for, though his lifework has been that
of practical electrician and inven-
tor, and though electricity, after all
his study, is still mystery to him,
still Mr.. Edison feels competent 10
pass some very decided judgments on
the still greater mystery of life. He
says: ELECTRICITY and it's origin and
what constitutes it's being is one Of
the great problems of the world. Also,
what is it in our own bodies that
gives us our energy? That is great
err mystery still" Mr.. Edison could
not solve the lesser mystery after
years of study. The greater mystery,
apparently without much study, he
solves as follows: "Is the will part
of the brain?" asked the reporter. 1
don't know" came the answer at
may or it may not be. The will may
be form of electricity, or it may be
a form of some other power Of which
ever it is, it is material; on that we
may depend. After death the force
or power We call will undoubtedly en-
dure, but it endures in this world,
not in the next And so with the thing
we call life, or the soul-mere specu-
lative terms for material thing
which, under given conditions, drives
this way or that. 1t, too, endures in
this world, not the other. l don't be-
lieve in a soul. We are matter and
we go back to matter"
These passages puzzle us not a lit
tie. In the first place, Mr. Edison has
not advanced one proof FOR his asser-
ton that the soul and the will are
material things. The reason we be-
lieve Is that he has no proof. Sec
ondly, il he persists in asserting that
there is no God, and that matter OK
plains everything, we fail to see how
there can be another world, as he
seems to insinuate here, when he
warns us that to solve the problem
of life eve had better find out what
is on the other side Of space" Evil
IDENTIFY there is nothing there. Third
", his repeated insistence on the diff
ference between electrical and vital
energy Is here evidently forgotten, for
he tells us that the force or power
We call the will" which is a vital
force, may be "a form Of electricity"
A dense fog-through which, however,
one thing Ia quite clear, namely, that
Mr.. Edison is materialist of the
most pronounced type.
We should like, however, to call
his attention to the fact that the ma
terialism he processes is a bit anti
quated. His more advanced brother
materialists have long since seen the
utter foolishness of trying to per-
suade the common-sense man in the
street that love is electricity, grief
ether waves of another character, Joy
chemical reaction; and they would
laugh, as We do, at Mr.. Edisons state
ment that it may be possible some
day to transmit over WIRE "the I'M
known energy that gives us life,"
which looks very much like saying
that some day or other we may make
ii wire live, and if a wire, why not
anything else we please?
1t is no doubt this debasing Of the
principle of life to the essential level
of an organic energy that has led Mr..
Edison to the strange statement that
"the mysteries of light, space and
gravitation were the chief problems
that stood in the way" of understand
ing what makes your finger wriggle
when you want it to-" What answer
Catholic scientist, like WaSmann,
would give to such an utterance we
know quite we'll. He would say that
light and space and gravitation have
nothing at all to do with discovering
the principle of human life. And if
we were to go to a non-Catholic like
Driesch, a man acknowledged by the
non-C Catholic scientific world to be an
authority in this line, we get the very
same answer. For in his exhaustive
work on Science and Philosophy of
the Organism" written with the ex-
press purpose of solving the mystery
Of life energy, there is not one effort
made to ''solve the mysteries If
light, space and gravitation." In this
matter we think that the testimony