PROBABILITY AND ENTROPY 161 



alone are striving for distinction in the midst 

 of the almost overwhelming leveling forces in 

 the great democracy of the atoms. It is not 

 necessary to assume that we shall find on any 

 large scale an obvious exception to the law of 

 entropy, for in the great flow of irreversible 

 processes it is far easier to swim with the cur- 

 rent than against it. But here and there it may 

 be possible to take advantage of the eddies 

 which we have called the fluctuations from the 

 average state. These fluctuations are no more 

 discernible to us than the waves of the ocean to 

 an aviator; but living organisms run through 

 a great range of size. If we care to make a very 

 rough scale we may say that a man is to a fly 

 as a fly to a microbe, as a microbe to the organ- 

 ism of a filtrable virus, or of the "phages" which 

 are now interesting the bacteriologist, and 

 finally as such an organism is to an organic 

 molecule. If the more minute creatures, or the 

 smaller subdivisions of our o^ti organism, are 

 capable of choosing between individual mole- 

 cules or of utilizing those fluctuations which, 

 although invisible to us, are great maelstroms 

 to them, would it be more wonderful than it is to 

 see a fowl selecting little grains of seed, or an 



