FINAL DEDUCTIONS. 



89 



thousands of years. Were grander problems ever 

 presented or nobler prizes ever offered the man of 

 science than these ? Nature solved them in the 

 earHest days of the earth's history ; it begins to seem 

 probable that man may find a way to penetrate the 

 secrets and solve the problems of life and vitality. 

 All that he seeks may be evolved from the mysteries 

 and lessons of life. 



29. The Living Body is a machine in which the 

 ^'law of Carnot," which asserts the necessity of waste in 

 all thermodynamic processes and in every heat-engine, 

 and which shows that waste to be the greater as the range 

 of temperature worked through by the machine is the 

 more restricted, is evaded ; it produces electricity with- 

 out intermediate conversions and losses ; it obtains 

 heat without high-temperature combustion, and even, 

 in some cases, light without any sensible heat. In other 

 words, in the vital system of man and of the lower 

 animals nature shows us the practicability of directly 

 converting any one form of energy into any other, 

 without those losses and unavoidable wastes character- 

 istic of the methods the invention of which has been 

 the pride and the boast of man. Every living creature, 

 man and worm alike, shows him that his great task is 

 but half accomplished ; that his grandest inventions are 

 but crudest and remote imitations; that his best work 

 is wasteful and awkward. Every animate creature is a 

 machine of enormously higher efficiency as a dynamic 

 engine than his most elaborate construction as illus- 

 trated in the 30,000 horse-power engines of the Cam- 

 pania" or the Lucania," or in the most powerful 

 locomotive. Every gymnotus living in the mud of a 

 tropical stream puts to shame man's best effort in the 



