LIFE AND CHANCE 
Iv 
Contingency attends all forms of life, but deter- 
minism rules throughout the realm of insensate 
matter. The pulp of all fruits is purposeful; it is a 
wage for any animal that will come and sow this 
seed, but behold how largely chance enters into this 
bargain! The heavy nuts have neither hooks nor 
springs nor wings, but they are toothsome to birds 
and beasts which supply feet and wings, hence they 
get scattered. Every part and organ of a living body 
is purposeful, and not the result of chance as we use 
the term, but its lot is cast in a world of unorganized 
material forces, which go their endless rounds from 
one static condition to another, bound in the iron 
law of causality. 
Nature makes her knives and shears and drills 
and chisels and augers and hammers a part of a 
living organism, while with man they are but the 
mechanical extension of his hand and brain. The 
parts of a watch are no more purposeful than are the 
parts of the human body, and are no more the result 
of a “fortuitous concourse of atoms”’; but there is 
no mystery about a watch; it can all be explained in 
terms of mechanics plus the mind of man. A living 
body cannot be so explained; the mystery is in the 
organizing principle which defies all analysis and all 
attempts at reproduction. “Natural philosophy,” 
says Professor Soddy, of Glasgow University, “may 
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