THE BREATH OF LIFE 



If we look upon life as inherent or potential in the 

 constitution of matter, dependent upon outward 

 physical and chemical conditions for its develop- 

 ment, we are accounting for life in terms of matter 

 and motion, and are in the ranks of the materialists. 

 But if we find ourselves unable to set the ultimate 

 particles of matter in action, or so working as to 

 produce the reaction which results in life, without 

 conceiving of some new force or principle oper- 

 ating upon them, then we are in the ranks of the 

 vitalists or idealists. The idealists see the original 

 atoms slumbering there in rock and sea and soil for 

 untold ages, till, moved upon by some unknown 

 factor, they draw together in certain fixed order and 

 numbers, and life is the result. Something seems to 

 put a spell upon them and cause them to behave so 

 differently from the way they behaved before they 

 were drawn into the life circuit. 



When we think of life, as the materialists do, as 

 of mechanico-chemical origin, or explicable in terms 

 of the natural universal order, we think of the play 

 of material forces amid which we live, we think of 

 their subtle action and interaction all about us — 

 of osmosis, capillarity, radio-activity, electricity, 

 thermism, and the like; we think of the four states 

 of matter, — solid, fluid, gaseous, and ethereal, — 

 of how little our senses take in of their total activ- 

 ities, and we do not feel the need of invoking a 

 transcendental principle to account for it. 



222 



