THE BREATH OF LIFE 



it would never assume without this something; it 

 lifts lime and iron and silica and potash and carbon, 

 against gravity, up into trees and animal forms, not 

 by a new force, but by an old force in the hands of 

 a new agent. 



The cattle move about the field, the drift boulders 

 slowly creep down the slopes; there is no doubt that 

 the final source of the force is in both cases the same; 

 what we call gravity, a name for a mystery, is the 

 form it takes in the case of the rocks, and what we 

 call vitality, another name for a mystery, is the 

 form it takes in the case of the cattle; without the 

 solar and stellar energy, could there be any motion 

 of either rock or beast? 



Force is universal, it pervades all nature, one 

 manifestation of it we call heat, another light, an- 

 other electricity, another cohesion, chemical affin- 

 ity, and so on. May not another manifestation of 

 it be called life, differing from all the rest more radi- 

 cally than they differ from one another; bound up 

 with all the rest and inseparable from them and 

 identical with them only in its ultimate source in the 

 Creative Energy that is immanent in the universe? 

 I have to think of the Creative Energy as immanent 

 in all matter, and the final source of all the trans- 

 formations and transmutations we see in the organic 

 and the inorganic worlds. The very nature of our 

 minds compels us to postulate some power, or some 

 principle, not as lying back of, but as active in, all 



