tself in each infinitely varied and beautiful
as well as unbeautiful form of matter. We can evoke electricity at will
from many different sources, but we can evoke life only from other life;
the biogenetic law is inviolable.

Professor Soddy says, "Natural philosophy may explain a rainbow but not
a rabbit." There is no secret about a rainbow; we can produce it at will
out of perfectly colorless beginnings. "But nothing but rabbits will or
can produce a rabbit, a proof again that we cannot say what a rabbit is,
though we may have a perfect knowledge of every anatomical and
microscopic detail."

To regard life as of non-natural origin puts it beyond the sphere of
legitimate inquiry; to look upon it as of natural origin, or as bound in
a chain of chemical sequences, as so many late biochemists do, is still
to put it where our science cannot unlock the mystery. If we should ever
succeed in producing living matter in our laboratories, it would not
lessen the mystery any more than the birth of a baby in the household
lessens the mystery of generation. It only brings it nearer home.

V

What is peculiar to organic nature is the living cell. Inside the cell,
doubtless, the same old chemistry and physics go on--the same universal
law of the transformation of energy is operative. In its minute compass
the transmutation of the inorganic into the organic, which constitutes
what Tyndall called "the miracle and the mystery of vitality," is
perpetually enacted. But what is the secret of the cell itself? Science
is powerless to tell us. You may point out to your heart's content that
only chemical and physical forces are discoverable in living matter;
that there is no element or force in a plant that is not in the stone
beside which it grew, or in the soil in which it takes root; and yet,
until your chemistry and your physics will enable you to produce the
living cell, or account for its mysterious self-directed activities,
your science avails not. "Living cells," says a late European authority,
"possess most effective means to accelerate reactions and to cause
surprising chemical results."

Behold the four principal elements forming stones and soils and water
and air for whole geologic or astronomic ages, and then behold them
forming plants and animals, and finally forming the brains that give us
art and literature and philosophy and modern civilization. What prompted
the elements to this new and extraordinary behavior? Science