fer,
President of the British Association, Professor Verworn of Bonn, and
many others find in the laws and properties of matter itself a
sufficient explanation of all the phenomena of life. They look upon the
living body as only the sum of its physical and chemical activities;
they do not seem to feel the need of accounting for life itself--for
that something which confers vitality upon the heretofore non-vital
elements. That there is new behavior, that there are new chemical
compounds called organic,--tens of thousands of them not found in
inorganic nature,--that there are new processes set up in aggregates of
matter,--growth, assimilation, metabolism, reproduction, thought,
emotion, science, civilization,--no one denies.

How are we going to get these things out of the old physics and
chemistry without some new factor or agent or force? To help ourselves
out here with a "vital principle," or with spirit, or a creative
impulse, as Bergson does, seems to be the only course open to certain
types of mind. Positive science cannot follow us in this step, because
science is limited to the verifiable. The stream of forces with which it
deals is continuous; it must find the physical equivalents of all the
forces that go into the body in the output of the body, and it cannot
admit of a life force which it cannot trace to the physical forces.

What has science done to clear up this mystery of vitality? Professor
Loeb, our most eminent experimental biologist, has succeeded in
fertilizing the eggs of some low forms of sea life by artificial means;
and in one instance, at least, it is reported that the fatherless form
grew to maturity. This is certainly an interesting fact, but takes us no
nearer the solution of the mystery of vitality than the fact that
certain chemical compounds may stimulate the organs of reproduction
helps to clear up the mystery of generation; or the fact that certain
other chemical compounds help the digestive and assimilative processes
and further the metabolism of the body assists in clearing up the
mystery that attaches to these things. In all such cases we have the
living body to begin with. The egg of the sea-urchin and the egg of the
jelly-fish are living beings that responded to certain chemical
substances, so that a process is set going in their cell life that is
equivalent to fertilization. It seems to me that the result of all
Professor Loeb's valuable inquiries is only to give us a more intimate