THE BAFFLING PROBLEM 



The functional or physiological life of the body as a 

 whole, also seems quite independent of our conscious 

 volitional or psychic life. That which repairs and 

 renews the body, heals its wounds, controls and co- 

 ordinates its parts, adapts it to its environment, car- 

 ries on its processes during sleep, in fact in all our 

 involuntary life, seems quite independent of the 

 man himself. Is the spirit of a race or a nation, or 

 of the times in which we live, another illustration 

 of the same mysterious entity? 



If the vital principle, or vital force, is a fiction, 

 invented to give the mind something to take hold 

 of, we are in no worse case than we are in some other 

 matters. Science tells us that there is no such thing 

 as heat, or light; these are only modes of activity in 

 matter. 



In the same way we seem forced to think of life, 

 vitality, as an entity — a fact as real as electricity 

 or light, though it may be only a mode of motion. 

 It may be of physico-chemical origin, as much so as 

 heat, or light; and yet it is something as distinctive 

 as they are among material things, and is involved 

 in the same mystery. Is magnetism or gravitation a 

 real thing? or, in the moral world, is love, charity, 

 or consciousness itself? The world seems to be run 

 by nonentities. Heat, light, life, seem nonentities. 

 That which organizes the different parts or organs 

 of the human body into a unit, and makes of the 

 many organs one organism, is a nonentity. That 



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