LIFE AND CHANCE 



ditions. Environment is either a check or a stimu- 

 lant. 



The origin of life and the many forms it has taken 

 were probably a matter of chance in the same sense 

 that the origin of springs and streams and the for- 

 mation of rivers were matters of chance. Given ova 

 weather-system, and the unequal elevation of land 

 above the sea, and fountains and streams are boimd 

 to appear, but they will all be modified and shaped 

 by the chance conditions they encomiter. Water 

 will flow, and the tendency of life to push out and 

 on, and organize itself into new forms, is equally 

 inherent. It seems to me we have to take into ac- 

 count this innate expansive or evolutionary force in 

 Hving matter. To ask whence it comes, how it is 

 related to the matter which it animates, as mankind 

 so long have asked, is at once to get beyond sound- 

 ing. All forms of life bear the stamp of the environ- 

 ment. Life must adapt itself to its material con- 

 ditions. And this Hving adaptation of life to its 

 environment is radically different from a mechanical 

 adjustment. Inanimate bodies adjust themselves, 

 animate bodies adapt themselves. It is this power 

 of adaptation which makes all purely mechanistic 

 conceptions of life so inadequate. The only machine 

 that can fit itself to the medium in which it moves is 

 the living machine. To inquire into the fitness of 

 the environment is to reverse the problem, and leads 

 to confusion; since the environment is uncompro- 

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