Those whose protests we have hitherto been considering have not added to their criticism of the mechanical theory any positive contribution of their own, or at least they give nothing more than very slight hints pointing towards a psychical theory. But there are others who have sought to overcome the mechanical theory by gaining a deeper grasp of the nature of “force” in general. Their attempts have been of various kinds, but usually tend in one direction, which can perhaps be most precisely and briefly indicated through Lloyd Morgan’s views, as summed up, for instance, in his essay on “Vitalism.”(94) In the beginning of biological text-books, we usually find (he says) a chapter on the nature of “force,” but it is “like grace before meat”—without influence on quality or digestion. Yet this problem must be cleared up before we can arrive at any understanding of the whole subject. In all attempts at “reducing to simpler terms,” it must be borne in mind that “force” reveals its nature in ever higher stages, of which every one is new. Even cohesion cannot be reduced to terms of gravitation, nor the chemical affinities and molecular forces to something more primitive. They are already something “outside the recognised order of nature.” In a still higher form force is expressed in the processes of crystallisation. At the formation of the first crystal there came into action a directing force of the same kind as the will of the sculptor at the making of the Venus of Melos. This new element, which intervenes every time, Lloyd Morgan regards, with Herbert Spencer (“Principles of Biology”), as “due to that ultimate reality which underlies this manifestation, as it underlies all other manifestations.” There can be no “understanding” in the sense of “getting behind things”: even the actions of “brute matter” cannot be “understood.” The play of chance not only does not explain the living; it does not even explain the not-living. But life in particular can neither be brought into the cell from without, nor be explained as simply “emerging from the co-operation of the components of the protoplasm,” and it is “in its essence not to be conceived in physico-chemical terms,” but represents “new modes of activity in the noumenal cause,” which, just because it is noumenal, is beyond our grasp. For only phenomena are “accessible to thought.”