THE BREATH OF LIFE 



will surreptitiously mature some of the burs before 

 the season is passed. 



Evidently a living thing is radically different 

 from a mechanical thing; yet modern physical sci- 

 ence tells me that the burdock is only another kind 

 of machine, and manifests nothing but the activity 

 of the mechanical and chemical principles that we 

 see in operation all about us in dead matter; and 

 that a little different mechanical arrangement of 

 its ultimate atoms would turn it into a yellow dock 

 or into a cabbage, into an oak or into a pine, into an 

 ox or into a man. 



I see that it is a machine in this respect, that it is 

 set going by a force exterior to itself — the warmth 

 of the sun acting upon it, and upon the moisture in 

 the soil; but it is unmechanical in that it repairs 

 itself and grows and reproduces itself, and after it 

 has ceased running can never be made to run again. 

 After I have reduced all its activities to mechanical 

 and chemical principles, my mind seems to see some- 

 thing that chemistry and mechanics do not explain 

 — something that avails itself of these forces, but 

 is not of them. This may be only my anthropo- 

 morphic way of looking at things, but are not all our 

 ways of looking at things anthropomorphic? How 

 can they be any other? They cannot be deific since 

 we are not gods. They may be scientific. But what 

 is science but a kind of anthropomorphism? Kant 

 wisely said, "It sounds at first singular, but is 



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