mical energy of food is directly transformed
into work, without first being converted into heat. Why a horse can do
more work than a one-horse-power engine is probably because his living
cells can and do draw upon this molecular energy. Molecules of matter
outside the living body all obey the law of probability, or the law of
chance; but inside the living body they at least seem to obey some other
law--the law of design, or of dice that are loaded, as Soddy says. They
are more likely always to act in a particular way. Life supplies a
directing agency. Soddy asks if the physical distinction between living
and dead matter begins in the jostling molecular crowd--begins by the
crowd being directed and governed in a particular way. If so, by what?
Ah! that is the question. Science will have none of it, because science
would have to go outside of matter for such an agent, and that science
cannot do. Such a theory implies intelligence apart from matter, or
working in matter. Is that a hard proposition? Intelligence clearly
works in our bodies and brains, and in those of all the animals--a
controlled and directed activity in matter that seems to be life. The
cell which builds up all living bodies behaves not like a machine, but
like a living being; its activities, so far as we can judge, are
spontaneous, its motions and all its other processes are self-prompted.
But, of course, in it the mechanical, the chemical, and the vital are so
blended, so interdependent, that we may never hope to separate them; but
without the activity called vital, there would be no cell, and hence no
body.

It were unreasonable to expect that scientific analysis should show that
the physics and chemistry of a living body differs from that of the
non-living. What is new and beyond the reach of science to explain is
the _kind of activity_ of these elements. They enter into new compounds;
they build up bodies that have new powers and properties; they people
the seas and the air and the earth with living creatures, they build
the body and brain of man. The secret of the activity in matter that we
call vital is certainly beyond the power of science to tell us. It is
like expecting that the paint and oil used in a great picture must
differ from those in a daub. The great artist mixed his paint with
brains, and the universal elements in a living body are mixed with
something that science cannot disclose. Organic chemistry does not
differ intrinsically from in