inorganic.

I do not see mind or intelligence in the inorganic world in the sense in
which I see it in the organic. In the heavens one sees power, vastness,
sublimity, unspeakable, but one sees only the physical laws working on a
grander scale than on the earth. Celestial mechanics do not differ from
terrestrial mechanics, however tremendous and imposing the result of
their activities. But in the humblest living thing--in a spear of grass
by the roadside, in a gnat, in a flea--there lurks a greater mystery. In
an animate body, however small, there abides something of which we get
no trace in the vast reaches of astronomy, a kind of activity that is
incalculable, indeterminate, and super-mechanical, not lawless, but
making its own laws, and escaping from the iron necessity that rules in
the inorganic world.

Our mathematics and our science can break into the circle of the
celestial and the terrestrial forces, and weigh and measure and separate
them, and in a degree understand them; but the forces of life defy our
analysis as well as our synthesis.

Knowing as we do all the elements that make up the body and brain of a
man, all the physiological processes, and all the relations and
interdependence of his various organs, if, in addition, we knew all his
inheritances, his whole ancestry back to the primordial cells from which
he sprang, and if we also knew that of every person with whom he comes
in contact and who influences his life, could we forecast his future,
predict the orbit in which his life would revolve, indicate its
eclipses, its perturbations, and the like, as we do that of an
astronomic body? or could we foresee his affinities and combinations as
we do that of a chemical body? Had we known any of the animal forms in
his line of ascent, could we have foretold man as we know him to-day?
Could we have foretold the future of any form of life from its remote
beginnings? Would our mathematics and our chemistry have been of any
avail in our dealing with such a problem? Biology is not in the same
category with geology and astronomy. In the inorganic world, chemical
affinity builds up and pulls down. It integrates the rocks and, under
changed conditions, it disintegrates them. In the organic world chemical
affinity is equally active, but it plays a subordinate part. It neither
builds up nor pulls down. Vital activities, if we must shun the term
"vital force," do both. Barring accidents, the life of all organisms is