THE BREATH OF LIFE 



jective life is amenable to physico-chemical analysis, 

 because many cases of simple animal instinct and 

 will can be explained on this basis — the basis of 

 animal tropism. Certain animals creep or fly to 

 the light, others to the dark, because they cannot 

 help it. This is tropism. He believes that the origin 

 of life can be traced to the same physico-chemical 

 activities, because, in his laboratory experiments, 

 he has been able to dispense with the male principle, 

 and to fertilize the eggs of certain low forms of ma- 

 rine life by chemical compounds alone. "The prob- 

 lem of the beginning and end of individual life is 

 physico-chemically clear" — much clearer than the 

 first beginnings of life. All individual life begins 

 with the egg, but where did we get the egg? When 

 chemical synthesis will give us this, the problem is 

 solved. We can analyze the material elements of an 

 organism, but we cannot synthesize them and pro- 

 duce the least spark of living matter. That all forms 

 of life have a mechanical and chemical basis is be- 

 yond question, but when we apply our analysis to 

 them, life evaporates, vanishes, the vital processes 

 cease. But apply the same analysis to inert matter, 

 and only the form is changed. 



Professor Loeb's artificially fathered embryo 

 and starfish and sea-urchins soon die. If his 

 chemism could only give him the mother-principle 

 also! But it will not. The mother-principle is 

 at the very foundations of the organic world, and 



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