THE BREATH OF LIFE 



and distinct and injected into matter from without 

 at a given time and place in the earth's history, 

 must undoubtedly be given up. Instead of escaping 

 from mechanism, this notion surrenders one into the 

 hands of mechanism, since to supplement or rein- 

 force a principle with some other principle from with- 

 out, is strictly a mechanical procedure. But the 

 conception of vitality as potential in matter, or of 

 the whole universe as permeated with spirit, which 

 to me is the same thing, is a conception that takes 

 life out of the categories of the fortuitous and the 

 automatic. 



No doubt but that all things in the material world 

 are causally related, no doubt of the constancy of 

 matter and force, no doubt but that all phenomena 

 are the result of natural principles, no doubt that 

 the living arose from the non-living, no doubt that 

 the evolution process was inherent in the constitu- 

 tion of the world; and yet there is a mystery about 

 it all that is insoluble. The miracle of vitality takes 

 place behind a veil that we cannot penetrate, in the 

 inmost sanctuary of the molecules of matter, in that 

 invisible, imaginary world on the borderland be- 

 tween the material and the immaterial. We may 

 fancy that it is here that the psychical effects its 

 entrance into the physical — that spirit weds matter 

 — that the creative energy kindles the spark we 

 call vitality. At any rate, vitality evidently begins 

 in that inner world of atoms and molecules; but 



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