THE BREATH OF LIFE 



itself against its enemies. The body forms anti- 

 toxins when it has to. It knows how to do it as well 

 as bees know how to ventilate the hive, or how to 

 seal up or entomb the grub of an invading moth. 

 Indeed, how much the act of the body, in encysting 

 a bullet in its tissues, is like the act of the bees in 

 encasing with wax a worm in the combs ! 



What is that in the body which at great altitudes 

 increases the number of red corpuscles in the blood, 

 those oxygen-bearers, so as to make up for the les- 

 sened amount of oxygen breathed by reason of the 

 rarity of the air? Under such conditions, the amount 

 of haemoglobin is almost doubled. I do not call this 

 thing a force; I call it an intelligence — the intelli- 

 gence that pervades the body and all animate na- 

 ture, and does the right thing at the right time. We, 

 no doubt, speak too loosely of it when we say that it 

 prompts or causes the body to do this, or to do that; 

 it is the body; the relation of the two has no human 

 analogy; the two are one. 



Man breaks into the circuit of the natural inor- 

 ganic forces and arrests them and controls them, 

 and makes them do his work — turn his wheels, 

 drive his engines, run his errands, etc.; but he can- 

 not do this in the same sense with the organic forces; 

 he cannot put a spell upon the pine tree and cause it 

 to build him a house or a nursery. Only the insects 

 can do a thing like that; only certain insects can 

 break into the circuit of vegetable life and divert its 



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