324 THE BIOLOGY OF THE SEASONS 



adjusting, self -increasing, self -repair ing, self-reproducing 

 machine. In fact, in all this it is so marvellous, so ultra- 

 mechanical, that we are sometimes apt to treat it, including 

 ourselves, as if the law of the conservation of energy does 

 not apply. But there is no reason to believe that the 

 student, for instance, who invokes what he calls his " will- 

 power " (a most useful habit within limits) when he ought 

 to go to bed, or who says that he is " too busy to be tired " 

 (usually a short-lived boast), is any exception to the general 

 fact of the conservation of energy, and of its tendency 

 to degradation into that unprofitable mode of motion 

 which we call diffused heat. 



We are tempted to make exceptions of ourselves in 

 this restless overworked age, partly because, by traditional 

 dualism, we often think of life too mystically, as if it 

 were a tireless entity. We call upon the resources of the 

 spirit to flog the jaded flesh. But on any theory this is 

 fallacious, except for a temporary spurt. For if the 

 resources of the spirit are reserve powers of the nervous 

 system accumulated in days of rest, such as Sundays, then 

 they are strictly limited. And if they are altogether 

 metakinetic spiritual powers, even then they can only enter 

 into the vital equation by controlling the ordinary corporeal 

 energies, which, by hypothesis, were approaching the limit 

 of exhaustion. Perhaps it is wiser to recognise that to 

 make an antithesis of body and soul is a medievalism. 

 The living organism is a unity. 



But we are in a manner right in making a distinction 

 between the inanimate system, where the equation showing 

 income and expenditure is always relatively clear, and 

 the animate system, where the proof of the conservation 

 of energy is a much more difficult matter. We have 

 often kept little water-mites for long periods in glass jars, 

 where the supply of food must be small in the clear water, 



