vni 



LIFE AND SCIENCE 



THE limited and peculiar activity which arises 

 in matter and which we call vital; which comes 

 and goes; which will not stay to be analyzed; which 

 we in vain try to reproduce in our laboratories; 

 which is inseparable from chemistry and physics, 

 but which is not summed up by them; which seems 

 to use them and direct them to new ends, — an 

 entity which seems to have invaded the kingdom of 

 inert matter at some definite time in the earth's 

 history, and to have set up an insurgent movement 

 there; cutting across the circuits of the mechanical 

 and chemical forces; turning them about, pitting one 

 against the other; availing itself of gravity, of chem- 

 ical affinity, of fluids and gases, of osmosis and exos- 

 mosis, of colloids, of oxidation and hydration, and 

 yet explicable by none of these things; clothing it- 

 self with garments of warmth and color and perfume 

 woven from the cold, insensate elements; setting up 

 new activities in matter; building up myriads of 

 new unstable compounds; struggling against the 

 tendency of the physical forces to a dead equilib- 

 rium; indeterminate, intermittent, fugitive; lim- 



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