THE BREATH OF LIFE 



Sir Oliver Lodge, famous physicist that he is, yet 

 has a vein of mysticism and idealism in him which 

 sometimes makes him recoil from the hard-and-fast 

 interpretations of natural phenomena by physical 

 science. Like M. Bergson, he sees in life some ten- 

 dency or impetus which arose in matter at a definite 

 time and place, "and which has continued to inter- 

 act with and incarnate itself in matter ever since." 



If a living body is a machine, then we behold a 

 new kind of machine with new kinds of mechanical 

 principles — a machine that repairs itself, that re- 

 produces itself, a clock that winds itself up, an en- 

 gine that stokes itself, a gun that aims itself, a ma- 

 chine that divides and makes two, two unite and 

 make four, a million or more unite and make a man 

 or a tree — a machine that is nine tenths water, a 

 machine that feeds on other machines, a machine 

 that grows stronger with use; in fact, a machine that 

 does all sorts of unmechanical things and that no 

 known combination of mechanical and chemical 

 principles can reproduce — a vital machine. The 

 idea of the vital as something different from and op- 

 posed to the mechanical must come in. Something 

 had to be added to the mechanical and chemical to 

 make the vital. 



Spencer explains in terms of physics why an ox is 

 larger than the sheep, but he throws no light upon 

 the subject of the individuality of these animals — 

 what it is that makes an ox an ox or a sheep a sheep. 



34 



