THE BREATH OF LIFE 



ical, and science is none the wiser for it. The me- 

 chanics and the chemistry of a machine are quite 

 sufficient to account for it, plus the man behind it. 

 To the physics and chemistry of a living body, we 

 are compelled to add some intangible, unknowable 

 principle or tendency that physics and chemistry 

 cannot disclose or define. One hesitates to make 

 such a statement lest he do violence to that oneness, 

 that sameness, that pervades the universe. 



All trees go to the same soil for their ponderable 

 elements, their ashes, and to the air and the light 

 for their imponderable, — their carbon and their 

 energy, — but what makes the tree, and makes one 

 tree differ from another? Has the career of life upon 

 this globe, the unfolding of the evolutionary proc- 

 ess, been accounted for when you have named all 

 the physical and material elements and processes 

 which it involves? We take refuge in the phrase 

 "the nature of things," but the nature of things 

 evidently embraces something not dreamed of in 

 our science. 



VII 



It is reported that a French scientist has dis- 

 covered the secret of the glow-worm's light. Of 

 course it is a chemical reaction, — what else could 

 it be? — but it is a chemical reaction in a vital proc- 

 ess. Our mental and spiritual life — our emotions 

 of art, poetry, religion — are inseparable from phys- 



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