THE BAFFLING PROBLEM 



kind of difference between a living and a non-living 

 body that we cannot fit into any of the mechanical 

 or chemical concepts that we apply to the latter? 

 Professor Loeb, with his "Mechanistic Conception 

 of Life"; Professor Henderson, of Harvard, with his 

 "Fitness of the Environment"; Professor Le Dan- 

 tec, of the Sorbonne in Paris, with his volume on 

 "The Nature and Origin of Life," published a few 

 years since; Professor Schafer, President of the 

 British Association, Professor Verworn of Bonn, 

 and many others find in the laws and properties of 

 matter itself a sufficient explanation of all the phe- 

 nomena of life. They look upon the living body as 

 only the sum of its physical and chemical activities; 

 they do not seem to feel the need of accounting for 

 life itself — for that something which confers vi- 

 tality upon the heretofore non-vital elements. That 

 there is new behavior, that there are new chemical 

 compounds called organic, — tens of thousands of 

 them not found in inorganic nature, — that there 

 are new processes set up in aggregates of matter, — 

 growth, assimilation, metabolism, reproduction, 

 thought, emotion, science, civilization, — no one 

 denies. 



How are we going to get these things out of the 

 old physics and chemistry without some new factor 

 or agent or force? To help ourselves out here with a 

 "vital principle," or with spirit, or a creative im- 

 pulse, as Bergson does, seems to be the only course 



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