THE LIVING WAVE 



which the printed page signifies involves something 

 not mechanical. The mechanical and chemical 

 principles operative in men's bodies are all the same; 

 the cell structure is the same, and yet behold the 

 difference between men in size, in strength, in ap- 

 pearance, in temperament, in disposition, in capaci- 

 ties! All the processes of respiration, circulation, 

 and nutrition in our bodies involve well-known 

 mechanical principles, and the body is accurately 

 described as a machine; and yet if there were not 

 something in it that transcends mechanics and 

 chemistry would you and I be here? A machine is 

 the same whether it is in action or repose, but when 

 a body ceases to function, it is not the same. It 

 cannot be set going like a machine; the motor power 

 has ceased to be. But if the life of the body were no 

 more than the sum of the reactions existing be- 

 tween the body and the medium in which it lives, 

 this were not so. A body lives as long as there is 

 a proper renewal of the interior medium through 

 exchanges with its environment. 



Mechanical principles are operative in every part 

 of the body in the heart, in the arteries, in the 

 limbs, in the joints, in the bowels, hi the muscles; 

 and chemical principles are operative in the lungs, 

 in the stomach, in the liver, in the kidneys; but to 

 all these things do we not have to add something 

 that is not mechanical or chemical to make the man, 

 to make the plant? A higher mechanics, a higher 

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