266 WHAT IS LIFE 



be interpreted adequately in the terms of physical 

 chemistry for the simple reason that the inorganic 

 cannot be interpreted adequately in these terms. 

 There seems to be no reason for accepting as the 

 final word in biological research an analysis which is 

 not accepted as the final word concerning the in- 

 organic, unless the mere circumstance that an experi- 

 ment is related to problems of life-processes consti- 

 tutes reason why the matter and electricity involved 

 should not be reduced to the terms of atomic physics. 

 Of course, this latter idea is absurd. To insist that 

 the interpretation of the organism in terms of the 

 electron and of atomic physics is legitimate, is merely 

 to insist in a specific way on the relationship which 

 exists between the organic and the inorganic on which 

 many — Helmholtz at the age of twenty-five, Ernst 

 Mach to the rounding-out of his scientific career, 

 Jacques Loeb, Wilhelm Ostwald, Sir Jagadis C. Bose, 

 and many others — forced by overwhelming evidence, 

 have insisted. Indeed, a large number of students 

 see an "all-embracing unity," and therefore, with 

 Wilhelm Ostwald, insist on "a doctrine which ex- 

 cludes all double-entry bookkeeping, which removes 

 all barriers, hitherto regarded as insurmountable, 

 between inner and outer life, between the life of the 

 present and that of the future, between the existence 

 of the body and that of the soul, and which compre- 



