THE BREATH OF LIFE 



Professor Loeb is a master critic of the life proc- 

 esses; he and his compeers analyze them as they 

 have never been analyzed before; but the solution 

 of the great problem of life that we are awaiting 

 does not come. A critic may resolve all of Shake- 

 speare's plays into their historic and other elements, 

 but that will not account for Shakespeare. Nature's 

 synthesis furnishes occasions for our analysis. Most 

 assuredly all psychic phenomena have a physical 

 basis; we know the soul only through the body; but 

 that they are all of physico-chemical origin, is an- 

 other matter. 



ii 



Biological science has hunted the secret of vitality 

 like a detective, and it has done some famous work; 

 but it has not yet unraveled the mystery. It knows 

 well the part played by carbon, oxygen, and hydro- 

 gen in organic chemistry, that without water and 

 carbon dioxide there could be no life; it knows the 

 part played by light, air, heat, gravity, osmosis, 

 chemical affinity, and all the hundreds or thousands 

 of organic compounds; it knows the part played by 

 what are called the enzymes, or ferments, in all liv- 

 ing bodies, but it does not know the secret of these 

 ferments; it knows the part played by colloids, or 

 jelly-like compounds, that there is no living body 

 without colloids, though there are colloid bodies 

 that are not living; it knows the part played by 



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