LIFE AND CHANCE 



IV 



Contingency attends all forms of life, but deter- 

 minism rules throughout the realm of insensate 

 matter. The pulp of all fruits is purposeful; it is a 

 wage for any animal that will come and sow this 

 seed, but behold how largely chance enters into this 

 bargain! The heavy nuts have neither hooks nor 

 springs nor wings, but they are toothsome to birds 

 and beasts which supply feet and wings, hence they 

 get scattered. Every part and organ of a living body 

 is purposeful, and not the result of chance as we use 

 the term, but its lot is cast in a world of unorganized 

 material forces, which go their endless rounds from 

 one static condition to another, bound in the iron 

 law of causality. 



Nature makes her knives and shears and drills 

 and chisels and augers and hammers a part of a 

 living organism, while with man they are but the 

 mechanical extension of his hand and brain. The 

 parts of a watch are no more purposeful than are the 

 parts of the human body, and are no more the result 

 of a "fortuitous concourse of atoms"; but there is 

 no mystery about a watch; it can all be explained in 

 terms of mechanics plus the mind of man. A living 

 body cannot be so explained; the mystery is in the 

 organizing principle which defies all analysis and all 

 attempts at reproduction. "Natural philosophy," 

 says Professor Soddy, of Glasgow University, "may 



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