THE NEWEST IDEAS AS TO WHAT 

 IS LIFE 



NOT very long ago one of the stock-in-trade illustra- 

 tions of the poverty or bankruptcy of science, or of 

 our ignorance in general, was the lack of any sort 

 of notion of what is life. Probably in many circles 

 it is so still. There are types of minds that find a 

 curious joy in ignorance, that cling to it tenaciously, 

 for whom the riddle of life has always been a sort of 

 a trump card. 



The physical process of life is no longer a riddle. 

 It is possible now to define and describe life as pre- 

 cisely as, let us say, the making of bread or the 

 brewing of beer. These illustrations have been 

 chosen advisedly. If it be urged that we do not yet 

 know what is fermentation, that we know as little 

 of the working of the housewife's yeast or the 

 brewer's malt as of life itself, there will be no one 

 to gainsay. For, curiously enough, they seem one 

 and the same thing. 



Physiology's present answer to the old riddle is, 

 very simply : Life is a series of fermentations. 



229 



