THE BREATH OF LIFE 



sue, and then an organ, and then the body as a 

 whole? If there is an inscrutable something at work 

 at the start, which organizes that wonderful piece of 

 vital mechanism, the cell, is it any the less operative 

 ever after, in all life processes, in all living bodies 

 and their functions, — the vital as distinguished 

 from the mechanical and chemical? Given the cell, 

 and you have only to multiply it, and organize these 

 products into industrial communities, and direct 

 them to specific ends, — certainly a task which we 

 would not assign to chemistry or physics any more 

 than we would assign to them the production of a 

 work on chemistry or botany, — and you have all 

 the myriad forms of terrestrial life. 



The cell is the parent of every living thing on the 

 globe; and if it is unthinkable that the material and 

 irrational forces of inert matter could produce it, 

 then mechanics and chemistry must play second fid- 

 dle in all that whirl and dance of the atoms that 

 make up life. And that is all the vitalists claim. 

 The physico-chemical forces do play second fiddle; 

 that inexplicable something that we call vitality 

 dominates and leads them. True it is that a living 

 organism yields to scientific analysis only mechani- 

 cal and chemical forces — a fact which only limits 

 the range of scientific analysis, and which by no 

 means exhausts the possibilities of the living organ- 

 ism. The properties of matter and the laws of mat- 

 ter are intimately related to life, yea, are inseparable 



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