THE BREATH OF LIFE 



back to the inorganic. Now, what keeps up the 

 constant interchange — this seesaw? The environ- 

 ment is permanent; the organism is transient. The 

 spray of the falls is permanent; the bow comes and 

 goes. Life struggles to appropriate the environ- 

 ment; a rock, for example, does not, in the same 

 sense, struggle with its surroundings, it weathers 

 passively, but a tree struggles with the winds, and 

 to appropriate minerals and water from the soil, 

 and the leaves struggle to store up the sun's en- 

 ergy. The body struggles to eliminate poisons or 

 to neutralize them; it becomes immune to certain 

 diseases, learns to resist them; the thing is alive. 

 Organisms struggle with one another; inert bodies 

 clash and pulverize one another, but do not devour 

 one another. 



Life is a struggle between two forces, a force 

 within and a force without, but the force within 

 does all the struggling. The air does not struggle to 

 get into the lungs, nor the lime and iron to get into 

 our blood. The body struggles to digest and as- 

 similate the food; the chlorophyll in the leaf strug- 

 gles to store up the solar energy. The environment 

 is unaware of the organism; the light is indifferent 

 to the sensitized plate of the photographer. Some- 

 thing in the seed we plant avails itself of the heat 

 and the moisture. The ^elation is not that of a ther- 

 mometer or hygrometer to the warmth and moisture 

 of the air; it is a vital relation. 



186 



