LIFE AND CHANCE 
water upon the globe would have made a vast differ- 
ence in the distribution of life upon the globe, but 
not to the non-living bodies.) A natural bridge in 
the rocky strata, the rude architectural and monu- 
mental forms in the rocks of the Southwest, are 
purely matters of chance, in the sense in which I am 
using the word. But the forms of vegetation and 
of animal life are not in the same sense accidental; 
they are purposive. All the parts of a living body 
are subordinated to the whole. Hence it possesses a 
unity in the sense that a non-living body does not. 
The unity and subordination of parts of a machine 
are given to it by the builder, and are not an evolu- 
tion from within. 
The question whether the beginning of life upon 
the globe was itself accidental — a fortuitous chem- 
ical reaction — is a question upon which our natural 
philosophers are divided. In this whole problem the 
accidental and the purposive seem so blended that 
it is a difficult matter to find our way between them. 
The mechanistic conception of life, which is winning 
more and more acceptance among scientific men, 
looks upon it as accidental, as truly so as are the 
sparks struck out by two colliding bodies. In this 
view man himself is as much the result of the action 
of the blind, irrational forces which we see in the 
inorganic realm about us as are the rains and the 
dews, the winds and the tides. Given the elements 
and the physical laws about us and these things are 
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