vni 



LIFE AND SCIENCE 



THE limited and peculiar activity which arises 

 in matter and which we call vital; which comes 

 and goes; which will not stay to be analyzed; which 

 we in vain try to reproduce in our laboratories; 

 which is inseparable from chemistry and physics, 

 but which is not summed up by them; which seems 

 to use them and direct them to new ends, an 

 entity which seems to have invaded the kingdom of 

 inert matter at some definite time in the earth's 

 history, and to have set up an insurgent movement 

 there; cutting across the circuits of the mechanical 

 and chemical forces; turning them about, pitting one 

 against the other; availing itself of gravity, of chem- 

 ical affinity, of fluids and gases, of osmosis and exos- 

 mosis, of colloids, of oxidation and hydration, and 

 yet explicable by none of these things; clothing it- 

 self with garments of warmth and color and perfume 

 woven from the cold, insensate elements; setting up 

 new activities in matter; building up myriads of 

 new unstable compounds; struggling against the 

 tendency of the physical forces to a dead equilib- 

 rium; indeterminate, intermittent, fugitive; lim- 

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