But here we are met with something surprising. May it not be that while we are impelled on general grounds to contend against the mechanical interpretation of vital phenomena, we are not so impelled on _religious_ grounds? May it not be that the instinct of the religious consciousness is misleading when it impels us—as probably every one will be able to certify from his own experience—to rebel against this mechanisation of life, the mechanical solution of its mysteries? Lotze, the energetic antagonist of “vital force,” the founder of the mechanical theory of vital processes, was himself a theist, and was so far from recognising any contradiction between the mechanical point of view and the Christian belief in God, that he included the former without ceremony in his theistic philosophical speculations. His view has become that of many theologians, and is often expressed in a definition of the boundaries between theology and natural science. According to the idea which was formulated by Lotze, and developed by others along his lines, the matter is quite simple. The interest which religion has in the processes of nature is at once and exclusively to be found in teleology. Are there purposes, plans, and ideas which govern and give meaning to the whole? The interest of natural science is purely in recognising inviolable causality; every phenomenon must have its compelling and sufficient reason in the system of causes preceding it. All that is and happens is absolutely determined by its causes, and nothing, no _causæ finales_ for instance, can co-operate with these causes in determining the result. But, as Lotze says, and as we have repeatedly pointed out, causal explanation does not exclude a consideration from the point of view of purpose, and the mechanical interpretation does not do so either. For this is nothing more than the causal explanation itself, only carried to complete consistency and definiteness. Purposes and ideas are not efficient causes but results. Where, for instance, there is a controlled purposive occurrence, the “purpose” nowhere appears as a factor co-operating with the series of causes, for these follow according to strict law, and the “purpose” reveals itself at the close of the series, as the result of a closed causal nexus, complete in itself, always provided that the initial links in the chain have been accurately estimated. The same is true of the processes of life. They are the ultimate result, strictly necessary and sufficiently accounted for in terms of mechanical sequence, of a long chain of causes whose initial links imply a definite constitution which could not be further reduced. Whether this ultimate result is merely a result or whether it is also a “purpose” is a question which, as we have seen twice already, it is wholly beyond the power of the causal mode of interpretation to answer. Given that an infinite intelligence in the world wished to realise purposes without instituting them as directly