Life and Mind 63 



Theve is no conservation about it. The seed embodies a stimulat- 

 ing and organizing- principle which appears to well from a limitless 

 source." 



He adds: 



"But although life is not energy any more than it is matter, 

 yet it directs energy and thereby controls arrangements of matter." 



Lodge here uses the term "energy" in the limited sense familiar to the 

 physicist and defined by them as the power or capacity to work. Thus 

 limited, he says life is not energy. This will also exclude gravitation and 

 electricity from the list of modes of energy, for he admits that neither 

 of them can be shown to conform to the laws governing the conserva- 

 tion of energy. I am a layman, and do not recognize this limitation 

 as legitimate. To the layman, the word "energy" is one of the synonyms 

 of the word "force." The Standard Dictionary defines the word 

 "energy", among other things, as 



"The power by which anything acts effectively." 

 One of its definitions of the word "force" is, that it is 



"Any operating or operative energy; any active agency, or pov/er 

 tending to change the state of matter." 



Accepting these definitions as correct, it seems to me that gravitation, 

 electricity, and life, are each and all forms of energy. It seems to me 

 that gravitation, that power that holds the universe in its grasp, and 

 electricity, as it lights our streets and homes and supplants steam in 

 driving mighty engines, are certainly exhibiting forms or modes of 

 energy. 



To me, life is a force, one of the modes in which force manifests, 

 for I believe that science is on the way to the demonstration of the 

 unity of the so-called forces, as it has already practically demonstrated 

 the unity of matter. That is, that as all the various so-called elementary 

 substances are resolvable into one primeval form of matter, so all the 

 various so-called forces are only various ways or modes in which one 

 single force manifests itself. Life is the building or constructing and 

 conserving force in nature. Sir Oliver Lodge says 'it directs energy 

 and thereby controls arrangements of matter." To me, instead of 

 directing matter, it iLses matter to build organic structures under the 

 direction of that Infinite Intelligence which lies back of the laws which 

 govern the universe. Instead of life directing matter, it is it.self di- 

 rected and the evidence shows that it slavishly follows the directions 

 given it. To say that life directs, is to attribute to it intelligence. I 

 can conceive of nothing in the action of life that indicates the posses- 

 sion by it of independent intelligence. The definition of life in the 

 Encyclopedia Britannica, that "life is the popular name for the activity 

 of protoplasm," seems to me flippant and unworthy of that great pub- 

 lication. True, protoplasm is the physical basis of life, that is, it is the 

 vehicle or instrument by which and through which life's work is done. 

 Protoplasm is not life nor is life protoplasm. Protoplasm, like other 

 substances, may and does die, and dead protoplasm, like any other dead 



