THE BREATH OF LIFE 



stitution of matter itself. What part the atoms and 

 electrons, and the energy they bear, play in it we 

 shall never know. Even if we ever succeed in bring- 

 ing the elements together in our laboratories so that 

 there living matter appears, shall we then know the 

 secret of life? 



After we have got the spark of life kindled, how 

 are we going to get all the myriad forms of life that 

 swarm upon the earth? How are we going to get 

 man with physics and chemistry alone? How are 

 we going to get this tremendous drama of evolution 

 out of mere protoplasm from the bottom of the old 

 geologic seas? Of course, only by making proto- 

 plasm creative, only by conceiving as potential in 

 it all that we behold coming out of it. We imagine 

 it equal to the task we set before it; the task is ac- 

 complished; therefore protoplasm was all-sufficient. 

 I am not postulating any extra-mundane power or 

 influence; I am only stating the difficulties which 

 the idealist experiences when he tries to see life in 

 its nature and origin as the scientific mind sees it. 

 Animal life and vegetable life have a common physi- 

 cal basis in protoplasm, and all their different forms 

 are mere aggregations of cells which are constituted 

 alike and behave alike in each, and yet in the one 

 case they give rise to trees, and in the other they 

 give rise to man. Science is powerless to penetrate 

 this mystery, and philosophy can only give its own 

 elastic interpretation. Why consciousness should 



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