THE DYNAMIC ELEMENT IN LIFE. H3 



as much as do the movements of the hawk. Both exhibit that 

 principle of activity which constitutes the essential element 

 in our conception of life. 



36&. Evidently, then, the preceding chapters recognize 

 only the form of our conception of life and ignore the body 

 of it. Partly sufficing as does the definition reached to express 

 the one, it fails entirely to express the other. Life displays 

 itself in ways which conform to the definition; but it also 

 displays itself in many other ways. We are obliged to admit 

 that the element which is common to the two groups of ways 

 is the essential element. The essential element, then, is that 

 special kind of energy seen alike in the usual classes of vital 

 actions and in those unusual classes instanced above. 



Otherwise presenting the contrast, we may say that due 

 attention has been paid to the connexions among the mani- 

 festations, while no attention has been paid to that which is 

 manifested. When it is said that life is " the definite corre- 

 spondence of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and 

 successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and 

 sequences," there arises the question Changes of what? 

 Within the body there go on many changes, mechanical, 

 chemical, thermal, no one of which is the kind of change in 

 question; and if we combine in thought so far as we can 

 these kinds of changes, in such wise that each maintains its 

 character as mechanical, chemical, or thermal, we cannot get 

 out of them the idea of Life. Still more clearly do we see 

 this insufficiency when we take the more abstract definition 

 " the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external 

 relations." Eelations between what things? is the question 

 then to be asked. A relation of which the terms are un- 

 specified does not connote a thought but merely the blank 

 form of a thought. Its value is comparable to that of a 

 cheque on which no amount is written. If it be said that 

 the terms cannot be specified because so many heterogeneous 

 kinds of them have to be included, then there comes the 



