LIFE AND CHANCE 
land surfaces of the globe than the one we behold 
might have occurred. 
Life has its roots in the ground. Everywhere in 
the inorganic world are movements that foreshadow 
the organic; inanimate nature is dreaming of the 
animate. If the worm, as Emerson says, “is striving 
to be man,” the clod is no less striving to be worm. 
The crystal prepares the way for the cell. The flow- 
ing currents of air and water are forerunners of the 
flowing currents of the living body. Solutions, pre- 
cipitations, chemical reactions, oxidation, osmotic 
pressure, assimilation, disassimilation, catalytic 
power, all antedate and apparently lead up to the 
movement in matter that we call vital. Life had a 
large capital to begin on. Its house was well fur- 
nished, and its servants awaited its call. It was 
dowered with the air, the water, the soil, the 
warmth, the light. The four estates of matter — the 
solid, the fluid, the gaseous, the ethereal — were its 
special inheritance. They furnished the conditions. 
The colloids mothered it, the catalyses fathered it. 
Electricity, radio-activity, chemical transforma- 
tions, are parts of its assets. The forces of life are 
only the forces of inert matter imbued with a new 
purpose. In the living body we see the same old 
chemistry and physics working to higher ends. The 
chemical transformation of the two substances into 
a body totally unlike either is a forerunner of the 
magical changes in the conditions of matter wrought 
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