nism is the
'secret of life' or rather one of the secrets of life." (_The
Organism as a Whole_, by Jacques Loeb.)

It will be explained later that one of the energetic phenomena of organic
chemistry--the "mind," which is one of the energies characteristic of this
class of phenomena, is "autonomous," is "self-propelling" and true to its
dimensionality. If we analyse the classes of life, we readily find that
there are three cardinal classes which are radically distinct in function.
A short analysis will disclose to us that, though minerals have various
activities, they are not "living." The plants have a very definite and
well known function--the transformation of solar energy into organic
chemical energy. They are a class of life which appropriates one kind of
energy, converts it into another kind and stores it up; in that sense they
are a kind of storage battery for the solar energy; and so I define THE
PLANTS AS THE CHEMISTRY-BINDING class of life.

The animals use the highly dynamic products of the _chemistry-binding_
class--the plants--as food, and those products--the results of
plant-transformation--undergo in animals a further transformation into yet
higher forms; and the animals are correspondingly a more dynamic class of
life; their energy is kinetic; they have a remarkable freedom and power
which the plants do not possess--I mean the freedom and faculty to move
about in _space_; and so I define ANIMALS AS THE SPACE-BINDING CLASS OF
LIFE.

And now what shall we say of _human_ beings? What is to be our definition
of Man? Like the animals, human beings do indeed possess the
_space-binding_ capacity but, over and above that, human beings possess a
most remarkable capacity which is entirely peculiar to them--I mean the
capacity to summarise, digest and appropriate the labors and experiences
of the past; I mean the capacity to use the fruits of past labors and
experiences as intellectual or spiritual capital for developments in the
present; I mean the capacity to employ as instruments of increasing power
the accumulated achievements of the all-precious lives of the past
generations spent in trial and error, trial and success; I mean the
capacity of human beings to conduct their lives in the ever increasing
light of inherited wisdom; I mean the capacity in virtue of which man is
at once the heritor of the by-gone ages and the trustee of posterity. And
because humanity is just this magnificent natural agency