100 The Bible of Nature 



the bath, as the Germans say, and ignore the most 

 salient fact, that all the manifold processes are 

 somehow correlated and centralized in a unified 

 behavior and in purpose-like agency. Even the 

 simplest organism is a higher unity than a whirl- 

 pool or a nebula in being a creative individuality. 

 From the Physicist's Point of View. From the 

 physicist's point of view, the living organism re- 

 sembles, as we have already said, some wonder- 

 ful kind of engine. It is a material system adapted 

 to transform matter and energy, but it differs from 

 any man-made machine in its greater efficiency, 

 and in this, that the transfer of energy into it is 

 attended with effects conducive to further transfer 

 and retardative of dissipation, and in this, that it 

 is a self-stoking, self-repairing, self-preservative, 

 self-adjusting, self-increasing, self-reproducing en- 

 gine. A linotype type-setting machine, for in- 

 explained in physico-chemical terms, we see at once that 

 there is nothing in them characteristic of life. . . . We 

 are now far more definitely aware of the obstacles to any 

 advance in this (physico-chemical) direction, and there is 

 not the slightest indication that they will be removed, but 

 rather that with further increase of knowledge, and more 

 refined methods of physical and chemical investigation, 

 they will only appear more and more difficult to sur- 

 mount." These two quotations illustrate the modern 

 vitalist position, in its critical, non-constructive aspect at 

 least. See Essay by J. Arthur Thomson and Patrick 

 Geddes in "Ideals of Science and Faith/' edited by J. E. 

 Hand; Allen, London, 1905, p. 333 (pp. 49-80). 



