THE VITAL ORDER 



as an independent reality. The latter view gives 

 the mind something more tangible to lay hold of. 

 Indeed, science gives the mind nothing to take hold 

 of. Does any chemical process give the mind any 

 separate reality to take hold of? Is there a spirit of 

 fire, or of decay, or of disease, or of health? 



IX 



Behold a man with his wonderful body, and still 

 more wonderful mind; try to think of him as being 

 fathered and mothered by the mere mechanical and 

 chemical forces that we see at work in the rocks 

 and soil underfoot, begotten by chemical affinity or 

 the solar energy working as molecular physic, and 

 mothered by the warmth and moisture, by osmosis 

 and the colloid state — and all through the chance 

 clashings and groupings of the irrational physical 

 forces. Nothing is added to them, nothing guides 

 or inspires them, nothing moves upon the face of 

 the waters, nothing breathes upon the insensate 

 clay. The molecules or corpuscles of the four prin- 

 cipal elements — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and 

 oxygen — just happened to come together in certain 

 definite numbers, and in a certain definite order, 

 and invented or built up that most marvelous thing 

 in the universe, the cell. The cells put their heads, 

 or bodies, together, and built the tissues, the tissues 

 formed the organs, the organs in convention as- 

 sembled organized themselves into the body, and 



239 



