THE BREATH OF LIFE 



will explode. So in life, what is it that sets up this 

 slow gentle explosion that makes the machinery of 

 our vital economies go — that draws new matter 

 into the vortex and casts the used-up material out 

 — in short, that creates and keeps up the unstable 

 condition, the seesaw upon which life depends? To 

 enable the mind to grasp it we have to invent or 

 posit some principle, call it the vital force, as so 

 many have done and still do, or call it molecular 

 force, as Tyndall does, or the power of God, as our 

 orthodox brethren do, it matters not. We are on 

 the border-land between the knowable and the un- 

 knowable, where the mind can take no further step. 

 There is no life without carbon and oxygen, hydro- 

 gen and nitrogen, but there is a world of these ele- 

 ments without life. What must be added to them 

 to set up the reaction we call life? Nothing that 

 chemistry can disclose. 



New tendencies and activities are set up among 

 these elements, but the elements themselves are not 

 changed; oxygen is still oxygen and carbon still car- 

 bon, yet behold the wonder of their new workman- 

 ship under the tutelage of life! 



Life only appears when the stable passes into the 

 unstable, yet this change takes place all about us in 

 our laboratories, and no life appears. We can send 

 an electric spark through a room full of oxygen and 

 hydrogen gas, and with a tremendous explosion we 

 have water — an element of life, but not life. 



42 



