FIELD AND STUDY 



as Haeckel, Verworn, Tyndall, Huxley, Schafer, 

 Loeb, and others that life is a product of the 

 material forces, while minds with a philosophical 

 and religious turn, like Sir Oliver Lodge and Henri 

 Bergson, and others equally eminent, feel com- 

 pelled to invoke a psychic or transcendental prin- 

 ciple to account for life — something in matter but 

 not of it. 



For my own part I can do nothing with such a 

 question without some sort of philosophy. Science 

 is convincing as far as it goes; it shows me how 

 inevitably life is bound up with the physico-chem- 

 ical forces, but when it has finished its explana- 

 tion I feel constrained to ask, "Is that all?" Is a 

 description or analysis of life-processes an adequate 

 account of life itself? Is a living body only the sum 

 of its physical and chemical forces? Is a man, for in- 

 stance, like any other mechanism, only the total of 

 the parts and elements which a chemical and phys- 

 ical analysis of him reveals? Does not the unity 

 of a living body have a significance which a me- 

 chanical unity does not have? 



§ 

 It seems almost paradoxical that deep-sea fishes, 

 subject to a pressure of thousands of pounds to the 

 square inch, should have tender and loosely knit 

 bodies. One would think that such a pressure would 

 beget very firm and compact bodies. Is it to be in- 

 ferred that if the atmospheric pressure upon our 

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