596 



NA TURE 



[April 23, 1903 



ends ; or whether direction, as well as amount, of activity 

 is wholly determined by mechanical causes. 

 Answers that might be given are : — 



(a) That life is a form of energy, and achieves its results 

 by imparting to matter energy that would not otherwise be 

 in existence, in which case life is a part of the machine, and 

 as truly mechanical as all the rest. I hold that this is false ; 

 because the essence of energy is that it can transform itself 

 into other forms, remaining constant in quantity, whereas 

 life does not transmute itself into any form of energy, nor 

 does death affect the sum of energy in any known way. 



(b) That life is something outside the scheme of 

 mechanics, although it can nevertheless touch or direct 

 material motion, subject always to the laws of energy and 

 all other mechanical laws; supplementing them, but contra- 

 dicting or traversing them no whit. 



This I hold to be true ; but in order to admit its truth we 

 must recognise that triggers can be pulled — force exerted, 

 and energy directed — without any introduction of energy 

 from without ; in other words, that the energy of operations 

 automatically going on in any active region of the universe 

 — any region where transformation and transference of 

 energy are continuously occurring, whether life be present 

 or not — that this energy can by means of life be guided 

 along paths that it would not automatically have taken, and 

 can be directed so as to produce effects that would not other- 

 wise have occurred ; and this without any break or sus- 

 pension of the laws of dynamics. 



That is where I part company with Prof. James Ward in 

 the second volume of " Naturalism and Agnosticism," not- 

 withstanding that I feel sure that Mr. A. J. Balfour agrees 

 with him. 



Those who take his view must either throw overboard the 

 possibility of interference or guidance or willed action alto- 

 gether, which is one alternative, or must assume that the 

 laws of physics are only approximate and incomplete, which 

 is the other alternative — the alternative favoured by Prof. 

 James Ward. I wish to argue that neither of these alter- 

 natives is necessary, and that there is a third or middle 

 course of proverbial safety. 



On a stagnant and inactive world life would be admittedly 

 powerless ; it could only make dry bones stir in such a world 

 if itself were a form of energy ; I do not suppose for a 

 moment that it could be incarnated on such a world ; it is 

 only potent where inorganic energy is in constant process 

 of transfer and transformation. In other words, life can 

 generate no trace of energy, it can only guide it. 



Guidance is a passive exertion of force without doing 

 work ; as a quiescent rail can guide a train to its destin- 

 ation, provided an active engine propels it. If a stone is 

 rolling over a cliff, it is all the same to " energy " whether 

 it fall on point A or point B of the beach. But at A it shall 

 merely dent the sand, whereas at B it shall strike a de- 

 tonator and explode a mine. Scribbling on a piece of paper 

 results in a certain distribution of fluid and production of a 

 modicum of heat ; so far as energy is concerned, it is the 

 same whether we sign Andrew Carnegie or Alexander 

 Coppersmith, yet the one effort may land us in twelve 

 months' imprisonment or may build a library, according to 

 circumstances, while the other achieves no' result at "all. 

 John Stuart Mill used to say that our sole power over 

 Nature was to move things; but strictly speaking we can- 

 not do even that; we can only arrange that things shall 

 move each other, and can determine by suitablv preconceived 

 plans the kind and direction of the motion that shall ensue 

 at a given time and place. Provided alwavs that we in- 

 clude in this category of " things " our undoubtedly material 

 bodies, muscles and nerves. 



But here is just the puzzle ; at what point does will and 

 determination enter into the scheme? Contemplate a brain 

 cell, whence originates a certain nerve-process whereby 

 energy is liberated with some resultant effect ; what pulled 

 the detent in that cell which started the impulse? No 

 doubt some chemical process, combination or dissociation 

 something atomic, occurred ; what made it occur just then 

 and in that way? 



I answer the same sort of prearrangement that deter- 

 mined whether the stone from the cliff should fall on point 

 A or point B— the same sort of process that guided the pen 

 to make legible and effective writing instead of illegible 



NO. J 747, VOL. 67] 



and ineffective scrawls — the same kind of process that deter- 

 mines when and where a trigger shall be pulled so as to 

 secure the anticipated slaughter of a bird. So far as energy 

 is concerned, the explosion and the trigger-pulling are the 

 same identical operations, whether the aim be exact or 

 random. It is vitality which directs; it is physical energy 

 which is directed and controlled both in time and space. 



I lay stress upon a study of the nature and mode of human 

 action of the interfering or guiding kind, because from it 

 we must be led if we are to form any intelligent conception 

 of divine action. True, it might be possible to deny human 

 agency or power and yet to admit the possibility of divine 

 agency, though that would be a nebulous and at least in- 

 conclusive procedure ; but if we are once constrained to 

 admit the existence and reality of human guidance and 

 control, we cannot deny the possibility of such powers and 

 action to any higher being, nor even to any totality of 

 things of which we are a part. 



The point immediately at issue turns upon the distinction 

 between " force " and " energy." These terms have been 

 so popularly confused that it may be difficult always to 

 discriminate them, but in physics they are absolutely dis- 

 criminated. A force in motion is a " power," it does work 

 and transfers energy from one body to another. But a 

 force at rest — a mere statical stress, like that exerted by a 

 pillar or a watershed — does no work, and alters no energy ; 

 yet the one sustains a roof which would otherwise fall, 

 thereby screening a portion of ground from vegetation ; 

 while the other deflects a rain-drop into the Danube or the 

 Rhine. 



It will be said some energy is needed to pull a hair- 

 trigger, to open the throttle valve of an engine, to press 

 the button which shall shatter a rock. Granted ; but the 

 work-concomitants of that energy are all familiar, and 

 equally present whether it be so arranged as to produce 

 any predetermined effect or not. The opening of the 

 throttle valve, for instance, demands just the same exer- 

 tion, and results in just the same imperceptible transform- 

 ation of fully-accounted-for energy, whether it be used to 

 start a train in accordance with a time-table and the guard's 

 whistle, or whether it be pushed over as by the wind at 

 random. The shouting of an order to a troop demands 

 vocal energy, and produces its due equivalent of sound ; but 

 the intelligibility of the order is something superadded, and 

 its result may be to make not sound or heat alone, but 

 history. 



Energy is needed to perform any physical operation, but 

 the energy is independent of the determination or arrange- 

 ment. Guidance and control are not forms of energy, and 

 their superposition upon the scheme of physics perturbs 

 physical and mechanical laws no whit, though it may pro- 

 foundly affect the consequences resulting from those same 

 laws. The whole effort of civilisation would be futile if we 

 could not guide the powers of nature. The powers are 

 there, else we should be helpless; but life and mind are 

 outside those powers, and can direct them along an 

 organised course. 



And this same life or mind, as we know it, is accessible 

 to petition, to affection, to pity, to a multitude of non- 

 physical influences; and hence, indirectly, the little plot of 

 physical universe which is now our temporary home has 

 become amenable to truly spiritual control. 



My contention, then, is that whereas life cannot generate 

 energy, it can exert guiding force, using the term force in 

 its accurate mechanical sense; not "power" or anything 

 active, but purely passive, directing— perpendicular to the 

 direction of motion ; the same kind of force which can con- 

 strain a stone to revolve in a circle instead of in a straight 

 line; a force like that of a groove or slot or channel or 

 ' guide." 



I do not see how this action of life can be resented, except 

 by those who deny life to be anything at all. If it exists, if 

 it is not mere illusion, it appears to me to be something the 

 full significance of which lies in another scheme of things, 

 but which touches and interacts with this material universe 

 in a certain way, building its particles into notable configur- 

 ations for a time— oak, eagle, man— and then evaporating 

 whence it came. This language is vague and figurative 

 undoubtedly, but, I contend, appropriately so, for we have 

 not yet a theory of life— we have not even a theory of the 



