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then lighted would continue to burn brighter and brighter. But man’s faith and hope require repeated testing. For five years after this the progress was uninterrupted; yet when the most generous and wide appreciation of my work had reached almost the highest point there came a sudden and unexpected change.
LIVING AND NON-LIVING.
In the pursuit of my investigations I was unconsciously led into the border region of physics and physiology, and was amazed to find boundary lines vanishing and points of contact emerge between the realms of the Living and Non-Living. Inorganic matter was found anything but inert; it also was a-thrill under the action of multitudinous forces that played on it. A common reaction seemed to bring together metal, plant and animal under a general law. They all exhibited the phenomena of fatigue and depression, together with possibilities of recovery and of exaltation, yet also that of permanent irresponsiveness which is associated with death. I was filled with awe at this great generalization; and it was with great hope that I announced my results before the leading scientific society. The results were so unexpected that they provoked incredulity. There were also misgivings about the inherent bent of the Indian mind towards mysticism and unchecked imagination. But in India this burning imagination which can extort new order out of a mass of apparently contradictory facts, is also held in check by the habit of meditation. It is this restraint which confers the power to hold the mind in pursuit of truth, in infinite patience, to wait, and reconsider, to experimentally test and repeatedly verify.
It is but natural that there should be prejudice, even in science, against all innovations; but there were added
