CHAPTER VI 



THE MECHANISM OF LIFE 



The principle which the early civilised races with their mythical 

 ideas poetically personified and represented as the cause of all life in 

 the world, lies at the foundation of all vital phenomena according 

 to the scientific knowledge of to-day. Among most people this 

 principle has found expression in its original form in the allegory of 

 the shifting contest between two hostile forces. These forces are 

 life and death, which the ancient Egyptian personified in the forms 

 of Horus and Typhon ; bloom and decaj', which the German 

 clothed in the legends of Baldur and Loki ; Ahriman struggling 

 with Ormuzd, by which the Persian represented the interchange of 

 the good and the evil in life ; God striving with the Devil, in 

 which the Christian of the middle ages perceived the all-creating 

 positive element in its opposition to the all-destroying, " ever-deny- 

 ing spirit " ; and, finally, they are recognised in the ever-alternating 

 processes of becoming and passing away, of building up and 

 breaking down, which control every living being and every vital 

 event. 



We have already recognised in the continual construction and 

 destruction of living substance or, in brief, in unbroken meta- 

 bolism, the real vital process, upon which the physical phenomena 

 of life are based. We have become acquainted with these 

 phenomena, have investigated the conditions under which they 

 make their appearance, and have determined the changes that 

 they experience under external influences. We must now 

 endeavour to construct a bridge between the vital phenomena and 

 the vital process, and, so far as the present condition of our know- 

 ledge allows, derive the former mechanically from the latter ; the 

 investigation of the mechanism of life forms the nucleus of the 

 science that deals with the physical phenomena of life. 



