

THE VITAL ORDER 



can restore the time-keeping power of the watch. 

 The watch is a mere mechanical contrivance with 

 parts fitted to parts externally, while the living body 

 is a mechanical and chemical contrivance, with 

 parts blended with parts internally, so to speak, and 

 acting together through sympathy, and not merely 

 by mechanical adjustment. Do we not have to 

 think of some organizing agent embracing and con- 

 trolling all the parts, and integral in each of them, 

 making a vital bond instead of a mechanical one? 

 There are degrees of vitality in living things, 

 whereas there are only degrees of complexity and 

 delicacy and efficiency in mechanical contrivances. 

 One watch differs from another in the perfection of 

 its works, but not as two living bodies with precisely 

 similar structure differ from each other in their hold 

 upon life, or in their measure of vitality. No analysis 

 possible to science could show any difference in the 

 chemistry and physics of two persons of whom one 

 would withstand hardships and diseases that would 

 kill the other, or with whom one would have the 

 gift of long life and the other not. Machines differ 

 from one another quantitatively more or less 

 efficiency; a living body differs from a machine 

 qualitatively its efficiency is of a different order; 

 its unity is of a different order; its complexity is of 

 a different order; the interdependence of its parts 

 is of a different order. Yet what a parallel there is 

 between a machine and a living body ! Both are run 

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