28 WORLD-MAKING 



have originated in the north, some of them within the arctic 

 circle, and this in periods of exceptional warmth, when the 

 perpetual summer sunshine of the arctic regions coexisted with 

 a warm temperature. The testimony of the rocks thus is that 

 not struggle but expansion furnished the requisite conditions 

 for new forms of life, and that the periods of struggle were 

 characterized by depauperation and extinction. 



But we are sometimes told that organisms are merely 

 mechanical, and that the discussions respecting their origin 

 have no significance any more than if they related to rocks or 

 crystals, because they relate merely to the organism considered 

 as a machine, and not to that which may be supposed to be 

 more important, namely, the great determining power of mind 

 and will. That this is a mere evasion by which we really gain 

 nothing, will appear from a characteristic extract of an article 

 by an eminent biologist in the new edition of the Encyclopedia 

 Britannica, a publication which, I am sorry to say, instead of 

 its proper role as a repertory of facts, has admitted partisan 

 papers, stating extreme and unproved speculations as if they 

 were conclusions of science. The statement referred to is as 

 follows : " A mass of living protoplasm is simply a molecular 

 machine of great complexity, the total results of the working of 

 which, or its vital phenomena, depend on the one hand on its 

 construction, and on the other, on the energy supplied to it ; 

 and to speak of vitality as anything but the name for a series 

 of operations is as if one should talk of the horologity of a 

 clock." It would, I think, scarcely be possible to put into 

 the same number of words a greater amount of unscientific 

 assumption and unproved statement than in this sentence. Is 

 " living protoplasm " different in any way from dead protoplasm, 

 and if so, what causes the difference ? What is a " machine " ? 

 Can we conceive of a self-produced or uncaused machine, or 

 one not intended to work out some definite results ? The results 

 of the machine in question are said to be " vital phenomena " : 



