THE BREATH OF LIFE 



is as if the elements had profited in some way under 

 the tutelage of life. Their experience has been a 

 unique and exceptional one. Only a small fraction 

 of the sum total of the inert ^matter of the globe can 

 have this experience. It must first go through the 

 vegetable cycle before it can be taken up by the 

 animal. The only things we can take directly from 

 the inorganic world are water and air; and the func- 

 tion of water is largely a mechanical one, and the 

 function of air a chemical one. 



I think of the vital as flowing out of the physical, 

 just as the psychical flows out of the vital, and just 

 as the higher forms of animal Me flow out of the 

 lower. It is a far cry from man to the dumb brutes, 

 and from the brutes to the vegetable world, and from 

 the vegetable to inert matter; but the germ and 

 start of each is in the series below it. The living 

 came out of the not-living. If life is of physico- 

 chemical origin, it is so by transformations and 

 translations that physics cannot explain. The but- 

 terfly comes out of the grub, man came out of the 

 brute, but, as Darwin says, "not by his own ef- 

 forts," any more than the child becomes the man 

 by its own efforts. 



The push of life, of the evolutionary process, is 

 back of all and in all. We can account for it all 

 by saying the Creative Energy is immanent in 

 matter, and this gives the mind something to take 

 hold of. 



9 



