nger the black sheep in
the flock that it was before the advent of modern transcendental
physics. The spiritualized materialism of men like Huxley and Tyndall
need not trouble us. It springs from the new conception of matter. It
stands on the threshold of idealism or mysticism with the door ajar.
After Tyndall had cast out the term "vital force," and reduced all
visible phenomena of life to mechanical attraction and repulsion, after
he had exhausted physics, and reached its very rim, a mighty mystery
still hovered beyond him. He recognized that he had made no step toward
its solution, and was forced to confess with the philosophers of all
ages that

"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

CONTENTS

I. THE BREATH OF LIFE 1

II. THE LIVING WAVE 24

III. A WONDERFUL WORLD 46

IV. THE BAFFLING PROBLEM 71

V. SCIENTIFIC VITALISM 104

VI. A BIRD OF PASSAGE 115

VII. LIFE AND MIND 131

VIII. LIFE AND SCIENCE 159

IX. THE JOURNEYING ATOMS 188

X. THE VITAL ORDER 212

XI. THE ARRIVAL OF THE FIT 244

XII. THE NATURALIST'S VIEW OF LIFE 254

INDEX 291

The reproduction of the bust of Mr. Burroughs which appears as the
frontispiece to this volume is used by courtesy of the sculptor, C. S.
Pietro.

I

THE BREATH OF LIFE

I

When for the third or fourth time during the spring or summer I take my
hoe and go out and cut off the heads of the lusty burdocks that send out
their broad leaves along the edge of my garden or lawn, I often ask
myself, "What is this thing that is so hard to scotch here in the
grass?" I decapitate it time after time and yet it forthwith gets itself
another head. We call it burdock, but what is burdock, and why does it
not change into yellow dock, or into a cabbage? What is it that is so
constant and so irrepressible, and before the summer is ended will be
lying in wait here with its ten thousand little hooks to attach itself
to every skirt or bushy tail or furry or woolly coat that comes along,
in order to get free transportation to other lawns and gardens, to green
fields and pastures new?

It is some living thing; but what is a living thi