ent and
progress, how could the new wants arise? Spencer says this progress is
the result of the action and reaction between organisms and their
changing environment. But you must first get your organism before the
environment can work its effects, and you must have something in the
organism that organizes and reacts from the environment. We see the
agents he names astronomic, geologic, meteorologic, having their effects
upon inanimate objects as well, but they do not start the process of
development in them; they change a stone, but do not transform it into
an organism. The chemist can take the living body apart as surely as the
watchmaker can take a watch apart, but he cannot put the parts together
again so that life will reappear, as the watchmaker can restore the
time-keeping power of the watch. The watch is a mere mechanical
contrivance with parts fitted to parts externally, while the living body
is a mechanical and chemical contrivance, with parts blended with parts
internally, so to speak, and acting together through sympathy, and not
merely by mechanical adjustment. Do we not have to think of some
organizing agent embracing and controlling all the parts, and integral
in each of them, making a vital bond instead of a mechanical one?

There are degrees of vitality in living things, whereas there are only
degrees of complexity and delicacy and efficiency in mechanical
contrivances. One watch differs from another in the perfection of its
works, but not as two living bodies with precisely similar structure
differ from each other in their hold upon life, or in their measure of
vitality. No analysis possible to science could show any difference in
the chemistry and physics of two persons of whom one would withstand
hardships and diseases that would kill the other, or with whom one would
have the gift of long life and the other not. Machines differ from one
another quantitatively--more or less efficiency; a living body differs
from a machine qualitatively--its efficiency is of a different order;
its unity is of a different order; its complexity is of a different
order; the interdependence of its parts is of a different order. Yet
what a parallel there is between a machine and a living body! Both are
run by external forces or agents, solar energy in one applied
mechanically from without; in the other applied vitally from within;
both suffer from the wear and tear of time and from abuse, but one is
self-repaired and the o