THE MECHANISM OF LIFE 231 



is a possibility of seeing a connection between the 

 development or mechanism to which vital pheno- 

 mena are due from the mere mechanical processes 

 which take place on a much larger scale throughout 

 the universe. 



There will no doubt be countless and innumer- 

 able such aggregates formed at a time, their 

 nature being dependent upon the constituent 

 biogens which have thus come together. We see 

 a clue here to the possibility of such a pheno- 

 menon as that of heredity of the transmission 

 of the characteristics of the two parents being 

 reproduced in the newly formed cell. This, how- 

 ever, is not a question which we can attempt to enter 

 into ; at the most what we can hope to do is to 

 propose a dynamical theory upon which the 

 simpler phenomena may be based, or, indeed, to 

 indicate merely how it should be possible for 

 the phenomena to occur that would in any 

 way resemble the phenomena of life around us. 

 More than that, if that indeed is not too much, 

 it would be beyond our scope to endeavour to 

 unravel. Yet these are not idle thoughts, and 

 heterodox or orthodox they may give a clue as 

 to the beginning and the end of life. The point 

 to bear in mind is that in the indefinitely small 

 we should expect to find phenomena like those which 

 occur in the indefinitely large, and that our own 

 scale of being should not prejudice our minds, as 

 if it were the dividing line between them. 



