VII The ‘Religion’ of the Modern Age

of the past. Our destiny is in our hands. On the new road, we must now go forward. (p. 293) Review The above contentions may appear to be attractive propositions from the philosophical point of view, yet the thinking behind them is basically flawed. 1. We must first consider that there is a fundamental difference between the material and human sciences such as makes it impossible for man to penetrate to the depths of himself as successfully as he can analyse the physical properties of matter. Nor is it true to say that insufficient work has been done on the human sciences for this to be possible. In actual fact, research on, and perusal of the latter can be traced much further back in time than those of the material sciences. Even so, efforts in these fields have met with only partial success. As Dr Carrel says, “A materialist and a spiritualist accept the same definition of a crystal of sodium chloride; but they do not agree with one another upon that of the human being.” (p. 17) No research to date gives any indication that this state of affairs is likely to change or improve. On what basis then can man hope to discover the secret of life in future? The writer has criticized those who wish to apply to man information, which actually relates to the material world: The second law of thermodynamics, the law of dissipation of free energy, indispensable at the molecular level, is useless at the psychological level, where the principles of least effort and of maximum pleasure are applied. The concepts of capillarity and of osmotic tension do not throw any light on problems pertaining to consciousness. It is nothing but word play to explain a psychological phenomenon in terms of cell physiology, or of quantum mechanics. (p. 43) In spite of adopting this stance, he goes on to say that human sciences are discoverable to us, just as material sciences are. This is