THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE 375 



through nature the living thing takes from its environment the 

 substance which it needs in the measure that it needs it, rejecting 

 what is superfluous or noxious. The organism resembles a 

 cistern which is constantly being filled but does not overflow on 

 account of the valves with which it is provided. It is as useless 

 to ask why it has these valves as to inquire why the force of 

 gravity exists to preserve the globe in its position in the solar 

 system. These secrets are hidden in the ultimate nature of things. 



No essential principle of life can be extracted from a living 

 body by any method yet discovered and there is not a sign that 

 any such extraction will be made. If life were something separate 

 from the living body, it would presumably be something which 

 would not suffer change of quantity. There would not be 

 less of it in old age than in youth (at least in the higher 

 forms). The contrary, however, appears to be the case. And if 

 it does change, in quantity, what, it may be asked, becomes of 

 the difference between the maximum and the minimum in the 

 body of a single individual ? How is the law of the conservation 

 of energy applicable here ? 



In seeking for what is special, the vitalist is obliged to enter 

 the psychological domain and to fall back upon the " directing 

 idea," which is the idea of the preservation of the individual 

 and the species, in other words the tendency of the whole 

 being in its conscious and semi-conscious elements to realise 

 existence. What is received from the outer world is reproduced, 

 as Grasset admits, in other forms in the organised body. The 

 organic and the inorganic are bound together in an indissoluble 

 connection. It is probable that the vitalist conception is often 

 due to the too exclusive stud}' of life in its higher forms. The 

 elaborately organised human body, for instance, with its complex 

 series of interactions, fermentations, osmotic and circulatory 

 phenomena, may appear to some to work in obedience to a 

 hidden impulse outside of or beyond the natural laws we know 

 but if life be considered in its most rudimentary conditions, 

 in the living specks which the microscope reveals, the suggestion 

 of design — for it is only a suggestion — should appear less 

 strong. And yet life in a microscopic object immersed in its 

 nutritional medium is not different in kind from life in a larger 

 body immersed in air. It is however not quite impossible to 

 connect the microscopic object with the inanimate matter from 

 which it may have sprung, especially if it be remembered that 



