THE BREATH OF LIFE 



they arise. Life does not come to dead matter in 

 this sense; it arises. Day and night are not traveling 

 round the earth, though we view them that way; 

 they arise from the turning of the earth upon its 

 axis. If we could keep up with the flying moments, 

 that is, with the revolution of the earth, we 

 could live always at sunrise, or sunset, or at noon, 

 or at any other moment we cared to elect. Love or 

 hate does not come to our hearts; it is born there; 

 the breath does not come to the newborn infant; 

 respiration arises there automatically. See how the 

 life of the infant is involved in that first breath, yet 

 it is not its life; the infant must first be alive before 

 it can breathe. If it is still-born, the respiratory 

 reaction does not take place. We can say, then, 

 that the breath means life, and the life means 

 breath; only we must say the latter first. We can 

 say in the same way that organization means life, 

 and life means organization. Something sets up 

 the organizing process in matter. We may take all 

 the physical elements of life known to us and jumble 

 them together and shake them up to all eternity, 

 and life will not result. A little friction between 

 solid bodies begets heat, a little more and we get 

 fire. But no amount of friction begets life. Heat 

 and life go together, but heat is the secondary 

 factor. 



Life is always a vanishing-point, a constant be- 

 coming an unstable something that escapes us 

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