The Breath of Life | Page 2

of nearly if not quite all that this volume
holds. To the rigid man of science this is frank mysticism; but without a
sense of the unknown and unknowable, life is flat and barren. Without
the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious, there is no art,
no religion, no literature. How to get from the clod underfoot to the
brain and consciousness of man without invoking something outside of,
and superior to, natural laws, is the question. For my own part I content
myself with the thought of some unknown and doubtless unknowable
tendency or power in the elements themselves--a kind of universal
mind pervading living matter and the reason of its living, through
which the whole drama of evolution is brought about.
This is getting very near to the old teleological conception, as it is also
near to that of Henri Bergson and Sir Oliver Lodge. Our minds easily
slide into the groove of supernaturalism and spiritualism because they
have long moved therein. We have the words and they mould our
thoughts. But science is fast teaching us that the universe is complete in
itself; that whatever takes place in matter is by virtue of the force of
matter; that it does not defer to or borrow from some other universe;
that there is deep beneath deep in it; that gross matter has its interior in
the molecule, and the molecule has its interior in the atom, and the
atom has its interior in the electron, and that the electron is matter in its
fourth or non-material state--the point where it touches the
super-material. The transformation of physical energy into vital, and of
vital into mental, doubtless takes place in this invisible inner world of
atoms and electrons. The electric constitution of matter is a deduction
of physics. It seems in some degree to bridge over the chasm between
what we call the material and the spiritual. If we are not within hailing
distance of life and mind, we seem assuredly on the road thither. The
mystery of the transformation of the ethereal, imponderable forces into
the vital and the mental seems quite beyond the power of the mind to
solve. The explanation of it in the bald terms of chemistry and physics
can never satisfy a mind with a trace of idealism in it.
The greater number of the chapters of this volume are variations upon a

single theme,--what Tyndall called "the mystery and the miracle of
vitality,"--and I can only hope that the variations are of sufficient
interest to justify the inevitable repetitions which occur. I am no more
inclined than Tyndall was to believe in miracles unless we name
everything a miracle, while at the same time I am deeply impressed
with the inadequacy of all known material forces to account for the
phenomena of living things.
That word of evil repute, materialism, is no longer 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