150 THE STORY OF LIFE'S MECHANISM. 



system are, in a measure, capable of compre- 

 hension within a mechanical formula, leaving out 

 of account the purely mental phenomena which 

 certainly have not been touched by the investi- 

 gation. All of these phenomena are reducible to 

 a few simple fundamental activities, and these 

 fundamental activities we find manifested by 

 simple bits of living matter unincumbered by 

 the complicated machinery of organisms. With 

 the few fundamental properties of these bits of 

 organic matter we can construct the complicated 

 life of the higher organism. When we come, 

 however, to study these simple bits of matter, 

 they prove to be anything but simple bits of 

 matter. They, too, are pieces of complicated 

 mechanism whose action we do not even hope 

 to understand. That their action is dependent 

 upon their machinery is evident enough from the 

 simple description of cell activity which we have 

 noticed. That these fundamental vital properties 

 are to be explained as the result of chemical and 

 mechanical forces acting through this machinery, 

 cannot be doubted. But how this occurs or what 

 constitutes the guiding force which corresponds 

 to the engineer of the machine, we do not know. 

 Thus our mechanical explanation of the living 

 machine lacks a foundation. We can understand 

 tolerably well the building of the superstruc- 

 ture, but the foundation stones upon which that 

 structure is built are unintelligible to us. The 

 running of the living machine is thus only in 

 part understood. The living organism is a 

 machine, or, it is better to say, it is a series of 

 machines ODC within the other. As a whole it is 



