THE BREATH OF LIFE 



that the artificial systems please us far less than the 

 natural systems. A sailing-ship takes us more than 

 a steamship. It is nearer life, nearer the winged 

 creatures. There is determinism in nature, mechani- 

 cal forces are everywhere operative, but there are 

 no machines in the proper sense of the word. When 

 we call an organism a living machine we at once 

 take it out of the categories of the merely mechani- 

 cal and automatic and lift it into a higher order — 

 the vital order. 



Professor Le Dantec says we are mechanisms in 

 the third degree, a mechanism of a mechanism of 

 a mechanism. The body is a mechanism by virtue 

 of its anatomy — its framework, its levers, its 

 hinges; it is a mechanism by virtue of its chemical 

 activities; and it is a mechanism by virtue of its 

 colloid states — three kinds of mechanisms in one, 

 and all acting together harmoniously and as a unit 

 — in other words, a super-mechanical combination 

 of activities. 



The mechanical conception of life repels us be- 

 cause of its association in our minds with the fabri- 

 cations of our own hands — the dead metal and 

 wood and the noise and dust of our machine-ridden 

 and machine-produced civilization. 



But Nature makes no machines like our own. 

 She uses mechanical principles everywhere, in inert 

 matter and in living bodies, but she does not use 

 them in the bald and literal way we do. We must 



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