ret of the difference between us, and
of the passing along of the difference from generation to generation
with but slight variations, may be, so to speak, in the way the
molecules and atoms of our bodies take hold of hands and perform their
mystic dances in the inner temple of life. But one would like to know
who or what pipes the tune and directs the figures of the dance.

In the case of the beechnuts, what is it that lies dormant in the
substance of the nuts and becomes alive, under the influence of the
warmth and moisture of spring, and puts out a radicle that pierces the
dry leaves like an awl? The pebbles, though they contain the same
chemical elements, do not become active and put out a radicle.

The chemico-physical explanation of the universe goes but a little way.
These are the tools of the creative process, but they are not that
process, nor its prime cause. Start the flame of life going, and the
rest may be explained in terms of chemistry; start the human body
developing, and physiological processes explain its growth; but why it
becomes a man and not a monkey--what explains that?

II

THE LIVING WAVE

I

If one attempts to reach any rational conclusion on the question of the
nature and origin of life on this planet, he soon finds himself in close
quarters with two difficulties. He must either admit of a break in the
course of nature and the introduction of a new principle, the vital
principle, which, if he is a man of science, he finds it hard to do; or
he must accept the theory of the physico-chemical origin of life, which,
as a being with a soul, he finds it equally hard to do. In other words,
he must either draw an arbitrary line between the inorganic and the
organic when he knows that drawing arbitrary lines in nature, and
fencing off one part from another, is an unscientific procedure, and one
that often leads to bewildering contradictions; or he must look upon
himself with all his high thoughts and aspirations, and upon all other
manifestations of life, as merely a chance product of the blind
mechanical and chemical action and interaction of the inorganic forces.

Either conclusion is distasteful. One does not like to think of himself
as a chance hit of the irrational physical elements; neither does he
feel at ease with the thought that he is the result of any break or
discontinuity in natural law. He likes to see himself as vitally and
inevitably related to the physical order as is th