THE STEM 



37 



but it has no intelligible meaning if used to denote some force 

 added, so to speak, from without, over and above the ordinary 

 properties acting on the physico-chemical mechanism but 

 not of it/' 



The English might be improved, but the meaning is in- 

 telligible. It is simply this, that chemistry accounts for the 

 things he does not know. Life is one of these things; he does 

 not know what it is, as he admits, but is satisfied that it is a 

 matter of chemistry. The self-sacrificing love of a mother for 



L0TEX 



HEART fTOOD 



'SflPYYOOD 



FIG. 7. Rough Diagram (not to scale), showing the position of the Various Layers 



in the Stem. 



her child is also, no doubt, equally capable of similarly lucid 

 explanation it is purely a matter of chemicals. 



After all, although Thomas Carlyle might have had no 

 claim to a knowledge of advanced chemistry, he was a man of 

 much more insight. In Sartor Resartus he has the following 

 passage: " All visible things are emblems. What thou seest 

 is not there on its own account, strictly speaking, is not there at 

 all! Matter exists only spiritually and to represent some idea 

 and body it forth." 



Henri Bergson, in his great work, Creative Evolution, 

 says: " Organization can only be studied scientifically if the 



