THE BREATH OF LIFE 



face of old age, seen, it is true, as against a back- 

 ground of their opposites, but seeming to indicate 

 something above chance and change at the heart of 

 Nature. Here is life in the midst of death; but death 

 forever playing into the hands of life; here is the or- 

 ganic in the midst of the inorganic, at strife with it, 

 hourly crushed by it, yet sustained and kept going 

 by its aid. 



in 



Vitality is only a word, but it marks a class of 

 phenomena in nature that stands apart from all 

 merely mechanical manifestations in the universe. 

 The cosmos is a vast machine, but in this machine 

 — this tremendous complex of physical forces — 

 there appears, at least on this earth, in the course of 

 its evolution, this something, or this peculiar mani- 

 festation of energy, that we call vital. Apparently 

 it is a transient phase of activity in matter, which, 

 unlike other chemical and physical activities, has 

 its beginning and its ending, and out of which have 

 arisen all the myriad forms of terrestrial life. The 

 merely material forces, blind and haphazard from 

 the first, did not arise in matter; they are insepara- 

 ble from it; they are as eternal as matter itself; but 

 the activities called vital arose in time and place, 

 and must eventually disappear as they arose, while 

 the career of the inorganic elements goes on as if 

 life had never visited the sphere. Was it, or is it, a 



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