624 THE WONDER OF LIFE 



The Animate. That the animate order of facts trans- 

 cends in some way the purely physical seems to some minds, 

 and to certain moods of other minds, almost self-evident. 

 The world of life is full of individuality, of spontaneity, and 

 apparent purposiveness. Living creatures often make 

 fatal mistakes when the environment is too much for them, 

 but in their normal surroundings what is characteristic 

 is their effectiveness of response, making for self-preserva- 

 tion and betterment. They are genuine agents, trying, or 

 seeming to try, one reaction after another until they find 

 the one which is most effective ; they profit by experience. 



It is necessary, however, to face the objection that these 

 qualitative criteria of livingness are manifest only in the 

 higher reaches of the animal kingdom, and illustrate the 

 compounding and elaborating that goes on in evolution. 

 The plant seems less animate than the animal, the coral less 

 animate than the bird. And we have already referred to 

 such difficulties as are presented by latent life and local 

 life, by the survival and development of a minute fragment 

 of an egg, and by the fertilization of a frog's egg by a pin's 

 prick. We must not take selected instances of life's apart- 

 ness ; we must consider vital phenomena all along the line. 



Argument from everyday Functions. When we 

 take counsel with the physiologists and inquire into the 

 contraction of muscles, the irritation of nerves, the diges- 

 tion and absorption of food, the process of respiration, and 

 the filtering of blood by the kidneys, we find that many 

 chemical and physical processes are involved, but that it 

 has not yet been found possible to give a continuous 

 physico-chemical description of any total vital function. 

 We can isolate off portions of a function and watch them 

 occurring in a test-tube away from the living body alto- 



