THE BREATH OF LIFE 



behold ! a man, a bird, or a tree ! — as chance a hap- 

 pening as the juxtaposition of the grains of sand 

 upon the shore, or the shape of the summer clouds 

 in the sky. 



Aristotle dwells upon the internal necessity. The 

 teeth of an animal arise from necessity, he says; 

 the animal must have them in order to live. Yet 

 it must have lived before it had them, else how 

 would the necessity arise? If the horns of an ani- 

 mal arise from the same necessity, the changing 

 conditions of its life begat the necessity; its life 

 problem became more and more complicated, till 

 new tools arose to meet new wants. But without 

 some indwelling principle of development and prog- 

 ress, how could the new wants arise? Spencer says 

 this progress is the result of the action and reaction 

 between organisms and their changing environment. 

 But you must first get your organism before the 

 environment can work its effects, and you must 

 have something in the organism that organizes and 

 reacts from the environment. We see the agents 

 he names astronomic, geologic, meteorologic, hav- 

 ing their effects upon inanimate objects as well, 

 but they do not start the process of development 

 in them; they change a stone, but do not transform 

 it into an organism. The chemist can take the living 

 body apart as surely as the watchmaker can take 

 a watch apart, but he cannot put the parts together 

 again so that life will reappear, as the watchmaker 



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