CHAPTER III 



LIFE, ITS PHYSICAL BASIS AND SIMPLEST 

 EXPRESSION 



There can be little doubt that the further science advances the 

 more extensively and consistently will the phenomena of nature be 

 represented by mathematical formulae and symbols. But the man of 

 science who, forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from 

 these formulae and symbols into what is commonly understood by 

 materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with the mathe- 

 matician who should mistake the x's and y's with which he works his 

 problems for real entities, and with this further disadvantage as 

 compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter 

 are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materi- 

 alism may paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty of a life. 

 HUXLEY. 



IN practice the distinction between a live thing and a lifeless 

 one is usually of the simplest, but to define this distinction in 

 terms so precise that the definition may be used as an invariable 

 criterion is a problem of considerable difficulty. The sheep 

 grazing in the field and the soil under its feet; the grass and 

 flowers on the one hand, and the stones on the other hand, in 

 the same pasture; there are no difficulties in the distinction 

 here. Nor, indeed, even when we come to consider the simplest 

 kinds of organisms, the tiny one-celled plants and animals that 

 teem in stagnant waters of the wayside puddle. As we examine 

 a drop of this water under the microscope we know without 

 question what in it is alive and what in it is dead. 



But let us attempt to put into words, into definite declaratory 

 phrases, the characteristics of organisms and we find ourselves 

 curiously impotent. When we come to study analytically 

 organic nature and inorganic nature, things animate and 



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