THE LIVING WAVE 



which the printed page signifies involves something 

 not mechanical. The mechanical and chemical 

 principles operative in men's bodies are all the same; 

 the cell structure is the same, and yet behold the 

 difference between men in size, in strength, in ap- 

 pearance, in temperament, in disposition, in capaci- 

 ties! All the processes of respiration, circulation, 

 and nutrition in our bodies involve well-known 

 mechanical principles, and the body is accurately 

 described as a machine; and yet if there were not 

 something in it that transcends mechanics and 

 chemistry would you and I be here? A machine is 

 the same whether it is in action or repose, but when 

 a body ceases to function, it is not the same. It 

 cannot be set going like a machine; the motor power 

 has ceased to be. But if the life of the body were no 

 more than the sum of the reactions existing be- 

 tween the body and the medium in which it lives, 

 this were not so. A body lives as long as there is 

 a proper renewal of the interior medium through 

 exchanges with its environment. 



Mechanical principles are operative in every part 

 of the body — in the heart, in the arteries, in the 

 limbs, in the joints, in the bowels, in the muscles; 

 and chemical principles are operative in the lungs, 

 in the stomach, in the liver, in the kidneys; but to 

 all these things do we not have to add something 

 that is not mechanical or chemical to make the man, 

 to make the plant? A higher mechanics, a higher 



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