THE BAFFLING PROBLEM 



he has to fit himself to it. Life has been able to ad- 

 just itself to the universal forces and so go along 

 with them; otherwise we should not be here. We 

 may say, humanly speaking, that the water is 

 friendly to the swimmer, if he knows how to use it; 

 if not, it is his deadly enemy. The same is true of 

 all the elements and forces of nature. Whether 

 they be for or against us, depends upon ourselves. 

 The wind is never tempered to the shorn lamb, the 

 shorn lamb must clothe itself against the wind. 

 Life is adaptive, and this faculty of adaptation to 

 the environment, of itself takes it out of the cate- 

 gory of the physico-chemical. The rivers and seas 

 favor navigation, if we have gumption enough to 

 use and master their forces. The air is good to 

 breathe, and food to eat, for those creatures that are 

 adapted to them. Bergson thinks, not without rea- 

 son, that life on other planets may be quite differ- 

 ent from what it is on our own, owing to a difference 

 in chemical and physical conditions. Change the 

 chemical constituents of sea water, and you radi- 

 cally change the lower organisms. With an atmos- 

 phere entirely of oxygen, the processes of life would 

 go on more rapidly and perhaps reach a higher form 

 of development. Life on this planet is limited to a 

 certain rather narrow range of temperature; the 

 span may be the same in other worlds, but farther 

 up or farther down the scale. Had the air been dif- 

 ferently constituted, would not our lungs have been 



87 



