SCIENTIFIC VITALISM 



planet, as soon as temperature will admit the pres- 

 ence of life, then life appears, as the evidence of 

 geology shows us." When we speak of the beginning 

 of life, it is not clear just what we mean. The unit 

 of all organized bodies is the cell, but the cell is itself 

 an organized body, and must have organic matter 

 to feed upon. Hence the cell is only a more complex 

 form of more primitive living matter. As we go 

 down the scale toward the inorganic, can we find the 

 point where the living and the non-living meet and 

 become one? " Life had to surge a long way up from 

 the depths before a green plant cell came into being." 

 When the green plant cell was found, life was fairly 

 launched. This plant cell, in the form of chloro- 

 phyll, by the aid of water and the trace of carbon di- 

 oxide in the air, began to store up the solar energy in 

 fruit and grain and woody tissue, and thus furnish 

 power to run all forms of life machinery. 



The materialists or naturalists are right in urging 

 that we live in a much more wonderful universe 

 than we have ever imagined, and that in matter 

 itself sleep potencies and possibilities not dreamt of 

 in our philosophy. The world of complex though 

 invisible activities which science reveals all about us, 

 the solar and stellar energies raining upon us from 

 above, the terrestrial energies and influences play- 

 ing through us from below, the transformations 

 and transmutations taking place on every hand, the 

 terrible alertness and potency of the world of inert 



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