108 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 



out that the similarity extends also to 

 the mode in which they are produced. 

 Everybody is probably convinced that 

 the forces of nature have never made 

 and never will make a steam engine. 

 If the same might be said in regard to 

 the machines which we call organisms, 

 then materialism would be disproved. 

 But why, to begin with, cannot the 

 forces of nature build steam engines? 

 We must be able to present the rea- 

 sons for this statement. 



If we first consider the building ma- 

 terial, we find this in the factories in 

 the form of plates, bars and ingots of 

 iron, copper, lead, tin, etc. Where do 

 these metals come from? Nowhere in 

 nature is such material found.* 



Humanity had inhabited the earth 

 thousands of years without having an 



♦Chemists understand that the so-called native iron, 

 found, for instance, in Greenland, forms no real 

 exception more than the chemical reactions that ab- 

 sorb heat form exceptions to the general law that 

 chemical processes set heat free, because if the 

 necessary simultaneous reactions are taken into ac- 

 count, all the reactions as a whole show a surplus of 

 heat. — Translator's note, 



