where friction does not exist.
Here perpetual or spontaneous motion is the rule. The motions of the
molecules of gases and liquids, and their vibrations in solids, are
beyond the reach of our unaided senses, yet they are unceasing. By
analogy we may infer that while living bodies, as we know them, do not
and cannot originate spontaneously, yet the movement that we call life
may and probably does take place spontaneously in the ultimate particles
of matter. But can atomic energy be translated into the motion of
ponderable bodies, or mass energy? In like manner can, or does, this
potential life of the world of atoms and electrons give rise to
organized living beings?

This distrust of the physical forces, or our disbelief in their ability
to give rise to life, is like a survival in us of the Calvinistic creed
of our fathers. The world of inert matter is dead in trespasses and sin
and must be born again before it can enter the kingdom of the organic.
We must supplement the natural forces with the spiritual, or the
supernatural, to get life. The common or carnal nature, like the natural
man, must be converted, breathed upon by the non-natural or divine,
before it can rise to the plane of life--the doctrine of Paul carried
into the processes of nature.

The scientific mind sees in nature an infinitely complex mechanism
directed to no special human ends, but working towards universal ends.
It sees in the human body an infinite number of cell units building up
tissues and organs,--muscles, nerves, bones, cartilage,--a living
machine of infinite complexity; but what shapes and cooerdinates the
parts, how the cells arose, how consciousness arose, how the mind is
related to the body, how or why the body acts as a unit--on these
questions science can throw no light. With all its mastery of the laws
of heredity, of cytology, and of embryology, it cannot tell why a man is
a man, and a dog is a dog. No cell-analysis will give the secret; no
chemical conjuring with the elements will reveal why in the one case
they build up a head of cabbage, and in the other a head of Plato.

It must be admitted that the scientific conception of the universe robs
us of something--it is hard to say just what--that we do not willingly
part with; yet who can divest himself of this conception? And the
scientific conception of the nature of life, hard and unfamiliar as it
may seem in its mere terms, is difficult to get away from. Life must
arise through