ABSTRACT
The principle of parsimony suggests the tempting hypothesis that, since it is only where life is operative that any constructive material process is going on, it must have been a Universal Life that was responsible for the original structure of the material world. The bodies which are philosophers’ means of expression, through contact with which they discover a world of space and sense and value, are only there to use because of this kinship. The picture of the world which natural science alone gives philosophers, without the aid of logical concepts developed in philosophical analysis, leaves the questions hopelessly unintelligible. When the single cell divides, therefore, its single ultimate will to maintain its self-activity must develop first the will to change of physical form, an aim induced by discomfort in the existing form, which has grown too large for the skin surface through which it ingests and egests food.
