192 DESIGN IN NATURE 



" (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 

 contradicting 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 hfe 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 otherwise have occurred ; and this without any break or suspension of the laws of 

 dynamics. 



" That is where I part company with Professor James Ward in the second volume of ' Naturalism and 

 Agnosticism,' notwithstanding 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 altogether, 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 Professor James Ward. I wish to argue 

 that neither of these alternatives 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 

 destination, 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 detonator and explode a mine. . . . John Stuart Mill used to say that our sole power over Nature was 

 to move things ; but strictly speaking we cannot do even that ; we can only arrange that things shall move each 

 other, and can determine by suitably pre -conceived plans the kind and direction of the motion that shall ensue at 

 a given time and place. Provided always that we include 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 ? Contem- 

 plate 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 pre -arrangement that determined whether the stone from the chff should fall on 

 point A or point B. The same kind of process that determines 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 -pulhng 

 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 land, because 

 from it we must be led if we are to form any intelhgent conception of divine action. True, it might be possible 

 to deny human agency or power and yet to admit the possibihty of divine agency, though that would be a nebulous 

 and at least inconclusive procedure ; but if we are once constrained to admit the existence and reality of human 

 guidance and control, we cannot deny the possibihty 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 

 discriminated. 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, hke that exerted by a pillar or a watershed — does not 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 pre-determined effect or not. The opening of the 

 throttle-valve, for instance, demands just the same exertion, and results in just the same imperceptible transforma- 

 tion 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 



