LIFE AS MECHANISM 



have always known that the organic and inorganic 

 worlds are mutually reactive. Substances taken into 

 the stomach affect the mind and the nerves and, on 

 the other hand, the state of the mind and nerves af- 

 fects the digestion. But this is not equivalent to say- 

 ing that the mind and nerves and digestion are phys- 

 ical. What we are concerned with is, what initiates 

 and what directs these mutual actions, and these ques- 

 tions, so far as I can see, the biochemists do not touch. 



The chief reason why biologists have transferred 

 their interest from the study of the organism as a liv- 

 ing thing to an attempt to construct it as a mechan- 

 ism is that work in the biological laboratory is mostly 

 confined to the properties of dead bodies and to the 

 cell. 



From the organism, after life is gone, the biologist 

 can learn many valuable things about its physical 

 and chemical structure. The dead body is a machine 

 and we can learn the same things from it that we 

 can learn from a contemplation of any other machine 

 — its form and materials, its levers, wheels, and links. 

 But such a study ignores the operation and the pur- 

 pose of machines, and those functions are, after all, 

 the real ones worth the labour of investigation^ And 

 from the biological laboratory of dead bodies we can 

 learn but little about the habits, the instincts, or the 

 manifold differences of the living world. No study 

 of the physical brain will show or even indicate that 

 it could think; no study of the physical nerves can 



C 275 3 



