THE MECHANISTIC VIEW OF LIFE 31 



His physical necessities became a problem completely 

 apprehended, a problem of energy, pure and simple. 

 Life, the mystifier, scarcely complicated it. The pale, 

 pursuing- spectre which has dogged the ages and 

 dragged them down is to be exorcised, not by 

 mystical philosophy and religions, but by physics, 

 chemistry and engineering. 



But even on the purely philosophical side the gain 

 is not inconsiderable. In constructing a machine 

 which will run and perform continuous work, the 

 scientific man has most nearly approached an imita- 

 tion of the living body. Conversely, the living body 

 has been often likened to a machine. If we regard 

 merely the physical attributes of life and ignore 

 the moral, aesthetic and spiritual aspects, then, un- 

 doubtedly, the body is a machine. Especially during 

 sleep is the parallel exact. It is a machine set to run 

 automatically whilst the engineer, the brain, has for 

 the time being vacated the controlling platform. 

 The pumping of the blood by the heart, the pumping 

 of air by the lungs, the digestion of food, with their 

 attendant sub-conscious regulations and adjustments, 

 go on in the living body, both asleep and awake, in a 

 definite round of themselves, much as a machine runs 

 in its appointed cycles by virtue of its automatic 

 valves and regulators. Awake and alert, it is a 

 machine with the engineer at the helm, continually 

 opening and closing non-automatic valves, making 

 it vary in its actions, not over one or two, or possibly 

 a dozen different combinations of motion, but over a 

 practically infinite variety. But, whatever the com- 

 plexities introduced by wakefulness, the sub-conscious 

 regulation of the human machine does not cease for 

 an instant. If we go further, beyond the physical 

 realm of motion and forces, and trespass upon the 

 intellectual activities of the brain, and the still finer 

 moral, aesthetic and spiritual activities of the soul, 



