cience reveals all about us, the solar and stellar energies raining
upon us from above, the terrestrial energies and influences playing
through us from below, the transformations and transmutations taking
place on every hand, the terrible alertness and potency of the world of
inert matter as revealed by a flash of lightning, the mysteries of
chemical affinity, of magnetism, of radio-activity, all point to deep
beneath deep in matter itself. It is little wonder that men who dwell
habitually upon these things and are saturated with the spirit and
traditions of laboratory investigation, should believe that in some way
matter itself holds the mystery of the origin of life. On the other
hand, a different type of mind, the more imaginative, artistic, and
religious type, recoils from the materialistic view.

The sun is the source of all terrestrial energy, but the different forms
that energy takes--in the plant, in the animal, in the brain of
man--this type of mind is bound to ask questions about that. Gravity
pulls matter down; life lifts it up; chemical forces pull it to pieces;
vital forces draw it together and organize it; the winds and the waters
dissolve and scatter it; vegetation recaptures and integrates it and
gives it new qualities. At every turn, minds like that of Sir Oliver
Lodge are compelled to think of life as a principle or force doing
something with matter. The physico-chemical forces will not do in the
hands of man what they do in the hands of Nature. Such minds, therefore,
feel justified in thinking that something which we call "the hands of
Nature," plays a part--some principle or force which the hands of man do
not hold.

VI

A BIRD OF PASSAGE

I

There is one phase of the much-discussed question of the nature and
origin of life which, so far as I know, has not been considered either
by those who hold a brief for the physico-chemical view or by those who
stand for some form of vitalism or idealism. I refer to the small part
that life plays in the total scheme of things. The great cosmic machine
would go on just as well without it. Its relation to the whole appears
to be little different from that of a man to the train in which he
journeys. Life rides on the mechanical and chemical forces, but it does
not seem to be a part of them, nor identical with them, because they
were before it, and will continue after it is gone.

The everlasting, all-inclusive thing in this universe seems to be inert