The strangest point about the materialistic or mechanistic conception of things is that every machine without exception has an inherent purpose and design. It is intended by its inventor to do certain definite things in a certain definite way. If an animal, therefore, is a machine, it must have a design and purpose, and presumably a designer. But the main idea underlying the mechanistic hypothesis was to eliminate the idea of purpose altogether, and reduce the universe to an accidental configuration of lifeless atoms. It is difficult to see how this attempt to reverse the rôle of Potter and Pot could ever have satisfied enquiring and well-balanced minds, but it is a fact that mechanistic views of life, after a period of almost general acceptance, are still prevalent among biologists whose education in the principles of logic has been somewhat hurried. The majority, however, have returned to the saner view that it is useless to explain the known by the less known. Human purpose is a primary fact of experience, and the embodiment of a human purpose in a tool or machine is a process which cannot be denied on any reasonable grounds. Now, a “purpose” is a datum of the mind, which cannot be reduced to any simpler elements. The purpose of a machine is the psychical element embodied in it. Briefly, we may call it the “soul of the machine.” Every machine has a psychical element, a purpose, a “soul.” It is therefore, simpler, more in accordance with sound philosophical principles, more direct and “economical” to explain machines in terms of psychology than to explain human bodies in terms of mechanism. The victories of Hephæstus are victories of mind over matter. The “mechanical age,” which to some appears as the very negation of the soul, is, on the contrary, the age of supreme psychical achievement. Science and invention are for ever annexing fresh regions of the universe and subjecting them to the free play of our mental faculties. The process of bringing material things into subjection to our will is a process of sublimation, which does not drag us down to the dust, but raises up dust into the realms of immortal spirit. III ... The liquid Ore he dreind Into fit moulds prepar’d; from which he form’d First his own Tooles; then, what might be wrought Fusil or grav’n in mettle.