LIFE AND CHANCE 



land surfaces of the globe than the one we behold 

 might have occurred. 



Life has its roots in the ground. Everywhere in 

 the inorganic world are movements that foreshadow 

 the organic; inanimate nature is dreaming of the 

 animate. If the worm, as Emerson says, "is striving 

 to be man," the clod is no less striving to be worm. 

 The crystal prepares the way for the cell. The flow- 

 ing currents of air and water are forerunners of the 

 flowing currents of the living body. Solutions, pre- 

 cipitations, chemical reactions, oxidation, osmotic 

 pressure, assimilation, disassimilation, catalytic 

 power, all antedate and apparently lead up to the 

 movement in matter that we call vital. Life had a 

 large capital to begin on. Its house was well fur- 

 nished, and its servants awaited its call. It was 

 dowered with the air, the water, the soil, the 

 warmth, the light. The four estates of matter the 

 solid, the fluid, the gaseous, the ethereal were its 

 special inheritance. They furnished the conditions. 

 The colloids mothered it, the catalyses fathered it. 

 Electricity, radio-activity, chemical transforma- 

 tions, are parts of its assets. The forces of life are 

 only the forces of inert matter imbued with a new 

 purpose. In the living body we see the same old 

 chemistry and physics working to higher ends. The 

 chemical transformation of the two substances into 

 a body totally unlike either is a forerunner of the 

 magical changes in the conditions of matter wrought 



