162 MATTER, ENERGY, CONSCIOUSNESS, SPIRIT 



like the ancient Greeks or primitive Vikings, would 

 have seen, in this control of the powers of Nature, 

 the act of a god, and from their point of view it, 

 truly, is the most god-like achievement man has 

 ever accomplished. But it would be an unsophisti- 

 cated person who to-day would regard physical 

 power as an attribute of the deity. On the view I 

 have expressed the only connection between will and 

 power is through the agency of life, animal or 

 vegetable. 



THE BODY AS A MECHANISM. 



The principles of energy and matter, with which 

 we are confronted in the inanimate world, govern 

 man no less than mechanism. The physics and 

 chemistry, the mechanism of molecules rather than 

 masses, of a living organism, differ from the physics 

 and chemistry of non - living matter notably in 

 character, but, so far as we can ascertain, not in 

 any fundamental way. That is to say, the physico- 

 chemical processes of the living body conform to all 

 the laws which apply when life is absent. 



As is well known, many of the peculiar products 

 of life can be artificially or "synthetically" prepared 

 without the aid of the organism. Cane-sugar has 

 been made identical with that produced by the cane 

 or beet, and so with camphor, the familiar flavouring 

 essences derived from plants and fruits vanilla, 

 pineapple, and so on dyes, like alizarine and indigo, 

 so that the cultivation of madder-root has ceased, 

 and that of the indigo plant, th$ woad of our 

 ancestors, is dying out. 



It is quite true that the methods employed are, 

 almost without exception, entirely different from 

 those that take place in the plant, and are of such 

 a character that they would instantly destroy life of 

 any sort. But we do not think, for all that, that 



