62 WHAT IS LIFE 



Suppose even that these things were believable they 

 are nothing to what happens in the formation of 

 the body of an animal. For here the original cell 

 or machine as some would have it does far more 

 than reproduce itself, it makes scores and hundreds 

 of new and quite different machines. We might 

 perhaps imagine a lathe which could beget other 

 lathes, but here is a lathe which produces sew- 

 ing-machines, organs, quick-firing guns, dredges, 

 railway-engines and a whole host of other 'compli- 

 cated assemblies of machinery. It is difficult if it 

 is not impossible to believe anything of the kind. 

 Some one has aptly remarked that if we were to 

 fill the hull of the Great Western with machinery 

 as fine as that which is met with in an ordinary 

 watch it would in some measure represent the 

 complicated arrangements and activities of the 

 single cell, but what must be its powers if it is 

 capable of developing in the manner and in the 

 directions in which we know that it can and does 

 develop. In order to parallel what it does by 

 chemical processes one would have to imagine a 

 crystal, say, of the so-called microcosmic salt since 

 that has a tolerably complicated formula for an 

 inorganic substance, placed in some sea water. 

 We have then to suppose that this crystal collects 

 to itself the necessary materials and surrounds 

 itself with a number of crystals of other salts, 



