12 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE. 



form appear ? Is not that something other than 

 the force, is it not master and director of the 

 force ? Are not force and matter his tools, and 

 does not form result from the particular way in 

 which the master, director, and designer works ? 

 Whatever name be given to this something, I 

 cannot conceive that it can be a correlate of 

 material force. Will any one maintain that the 

 man who made a machine is a correlate of the 

 heat that set it in motion after it was made ? 



The term vital power has been applied by 

 me to the marvellous agency which, besides 

 giving rise to form, silently effects the analysis 

 of compounds and causes their elements to be 

 rearranged, so that when synthesis occurs new 

 compounds result, which did not exist before. 

 The complex operations of analysis and syn- 

 thesis are performed as in a moment, and with- 

 out any bulky, cumbrous, though elaborate and 

 beautiful appliances, such as the chemist and 

 physicist are forced to employ, and the skill 

 to use which can only be acquired after years 

 of patient study and earnest work. Nature's 

 " apparatus " is a tiny mass of clear, transparent, 

 structureless stuff, it may be less than the 

 of any inch in diameter. This is also 



