THE BREATH OF LIFE 



your dead nitrogen atoms, your dead phosphorus 

 atoms, and all the other atoms, dead as grains of 

 shot, of which the brain is formed. Imagine them 

 separate and sensationless, observe them running 

 together and forming all imaginable combinations. 

 This, as a purely mechanical process, is seeable by 

 the mind. But can you see or dream, or in any way 

 imagine, how out of that mechanical art, and from 

 these individually dead atoms, sensation, thought, 

 and emotion are to arise? Are you likely to extract 

 Homer out of the rattling of dice, or the Differential 

 Calculus out of the clash of billiard balls?" Could 

 any vitalist, or Bergsonian idealist have stated his 

 case better? 



Now the Bishop Butler type of mind — the vis- 

 ualizing, idealizing, analogy-loving, literary, and 

 philosophical mind — is shared by a good many 

 people ; it is shared by or is characteristic of all the 

 great poets, artists, seers, idealists of the world; 

 it is the humanistic type that sees man everywhere 

 reflected in nature; and is radically different from 

 the strictly scientific type which dehumanizes nature 

 and reduces it to impersonal laws and forces, which 

 distrusts analogy and sentiment and poetry, and 

 clings to a rigid logical method. 



This type of mind is bound to have trouble in 

 accepting the physico-chemical theory of the nature 

 and origin of life. It visualizes life, sees it as a dis- 

 tinct force or principle working in and through 



220 



