own. The chemical and physical activity of matter is perpetual;
with a high-power microscope we may see the Brunonian movement in
liquids and gases any time and at all times, but the movement we call
vitality dominates these and turns them to new ends. I suppose the
nature of the activity of the bombarding molecules of gases and liquids
is the same in our bodies as out; that turmoil of the particles goes on
forever; it is, in itself, blind, fateful, purposeless; but life
furnishes, or _is_, an organizing principle that brings order and
purpose out of this chaos. It does not annul any of the mechanical or
chemical principles, but under its tutelage or inspiration they produce
a host of new substances, and a world of new and beautiful and wonderful
forms.

IV

Bergson says the intellect is characterized by a natural inability to
understand life. Certain it is, I think, that science alone cannot grasp
its mystery. We must finally appeal to philosophy; we must have recourse
to ideal values--to a non-scientific or super-scientific principle. We
cannot live intellectually or emotionally upon science alone. Science
reveals to us the relations and inter-dependence of things in the
physical world and their relations to our physical well-being;
philosophy reveals their relations to our mental and spiritual life,
their meanings and their ideal values. Poor, indeed, is the man who has
no philosophy, no commanding outlook over the tangles and contradictions
of the world of sense. There is probably some unknown and unknowable
factor involved in the genesis of life, but that that factor or
principle does not belong to the natural, universal order is
unthinkable. Yet to fail to see that what we must call intelligence
pervades and is active in all organic nature is to be spiritually blind.
But to see it as something foreign to or separable from nature is to do
violence to our faith in the constancy and sufficiency of the natural
order. One star differeth from another in glory. There are degrees of
mystery in the universe. The most mystifying thing in inorganic nature
is electricity,--that disembodied energy that slumbers in the ultimate
particles of matter, unseen, unfelt, unknown, till it suddenly leaps
forth with such terrible vividness and power on the face of the storm,
or till we summon it through the transformation of some other form of
energy. A still higher and more inscrutable mystery is life, that
something which clothes i