THE BREATH OF LIFE 



plies a directing agency. Soddy asks if the physical 

 distinction between living and dead matter begins 

 in the jostling molecular crowd — begins by the 

 crowd being directed and governed in a particular 

 way. If so, by what? Ah! that is the question. 

 Science will have none of it, because science would 

 have to go outside of matter for such an agent, and 

 that science cannot do. Such a theory implies in- 

 telligence apart from matter, or working in matter. 

 Is that a hard proposition? Intelligence clearly 

 works in our bodies and brains, and in those of all 

 the animals — a controlled and directed activity in 

 matter that seems to be life. The cell which builds 

 up all living bodies behaves not like a machine, but 

 like a living being; its activities, so far as we can 

 judge, are spontaneous, its motions and all its other 

 processes are self -prompted. But, of course, in it 

 the mechanical, the chemical, and the vital are so 

 blended, so interdependent, that we may never hope 

 to separate them; but without the activity called 

 vital, there would be no cell, and hence no body. 



It were unreasonable to expect that scientific 

 analysis should show that the physics and chemistry 

 of a living body differs from that of the non-living. 

 What is new and beyond the reach of science to ex- 

 plain is the kind of activity of these elements. They 

 enter into new compounds; they build up bodies 

 that have new powers and properties; they people 

 the seas and the air and the earth with living crea- 



180 



