APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 157 



is permanent while the conditions last, though its 

 constituents incessantly change. Living bodies are 

 just such whirlpools. Matter sets into them in the 

 shape of food, sets out of them in the shape of 

 waste products. Their individuality lies in the 

 constant maintenance of a characteristic form, not 

 in the preservation of material identity. 



Most of us are idolaters, and ascribe divine 

 powers to the abstractions " Force," " Gravity," 

 "Vitality," which our own brains have created. I 

 do not know anything about "inert" things in 

 nature. If we reduce the world to matter and 

 motion, the matter is not "inert," inasmuch as the 

 same amount of motion affects different kinds of 

 matter in different ways. To go back to my own 

 illustration. The fabric of the watch is not inert, 

 every particle of it is in violent and rapid motion, 

 and the winding-up simply perturbs the whole 

 infinitely complicated system in a particular fashion. 

 Equilibrium means death, because life is a succession 

 of changes, while a changing equilibrium is a con- 

 tradiction in terms. I am not at all clear that a 

 living being is comparable to a machine running 

 down. On this side of he question the whirlpool 

 affords a better parallel than the watch. If you dam 

 the stream above or below, the whirlpool dies ; just 

 as the living being does if you cut off its food, or 

 choke it with its own waste products. And if you 

 alter the sides or bottom of the stream you may kill 

 the whirlpool, just as you kill the animal by inter- 

 fering with its structure. Heat and oxidation as a 

 source of heat appear to supply energy to the living 

 machine, the molecular structure of the germ furnish- 

 ing the "sides and bottom of the stream," that is, 

 determining the results which the energy supplied 

 shall produce. 



