THE PLEASURES OF SCIENCE 



peared. When I think of these things I am com- 

 pelled to see a new principle operating in non-living 

 matter to produce the living. We see chemical 

 affinity working to produce the various compounds 

 — why not vital affinity working to produce living 

 bodies? 



The difficulty to the scientific mind is the idea 

 of a new principle. Physics and chemistry are coeval 

 with time, but life, as we are compelled to think of 

 it, is not. So there we are up a stump. One trouble 

 is we think too sharply of the beginning of life, 

 think imder the figure of our own beginnings, or of 

 mechanical beginnings. Vital beginnings are brought 

 about by slow, insensible changes, there are no 

 sharp lines. The wheels begin to revolve, the ice 

 in the river begins to move. Life did not begin in 

 that way; it was beginning, or beginning to get 

 ready to begin, for all time. The potentiality of it 

 existed in matter from the first. As the conditions 

 slowly ripened, life was slowly beginning, so we 

 have to think of it as life and not-life, positive and 

 negative, at the same time. But this is not the only 

 case in nature where contradictions unite. When 

 does the day begin to dawn, or the night to end.^^ 

 The chick breaks the shell at a definite moment of 

 time, but when did it start on the road of chick- 

 hood? The clock begins to strike, but when did it 

 begin to be a clock? The beginnings and endings of 

 things are baffling. Where is the beginning of the 



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