Life seems to beget a new kind of chemistry, the same elements behave so
differently when they are drawn into the life circuit from what they
did before. Carbon, for instance, enters into hundreds of new compounds
in the organic world that are unknown in the inorganic world. I am thus
speaking of life as if it were something, some force or agent, that
antedates its material manifestations, whereas in the eyes of science
there is no separation of the one from the other. In an explosion there
is usually something anterior to, or apart from, the explosive compound,
that pulls the trigger, or touches the match, or completes the circuit,
but in the slow and gentle explosions that keep the life machinery
going, we cannot make such a distinction. The spark and the powder are
one; the gun primes and fires itself; the battery is perpetually
self-charged; the lamp is self-trimmed and self-lit.
Sir Oliver Lodge is apparently so impressed with some such
considerations that he spiritualizes life, and makes it some mysterious
entity in itself, existing apart from the matter which it animates and
uses; not a source of energy but a timer and releaser of energy. Henri
Bergson, in his "Creative Evolution," expounds a similar philosophy of
life. Life is a current in opposition to matter which it enters into,
and organizes into the myriads of living forms.
I confess that it is easier for me to think of life in these terms than
in terms of physical science. The view falls in better with our
anthropomorphic tendencies. It appeals to the imagination and to our
myth-making aptitudes. It gives a dramatic interest to the question.
With Bergson we see life struggling with matter, seeking to overcome its
obduracy, compromising with it, taking a half-loaf when it cannot get a
whole one; we see evolution as the unfolding of a vast drama acted upon
the stage of geologic time. Creation becomes a perpetual process, the
creative energy an ever-present and familiar fact. Bergson's book is a
wonderful addition to the literature of science and of philosophy. The
poet, the dreamer, the mystic, in each of us takes heart at Bergson's
beautiful philosophy; it seems like a part of life; it goes so well with
living things. As James said, it is like the light of the morning and
the singing of birds; we glory in seeing the intellect humbled as he
humbles it. The concepts of science try our mettle. They do not appeal
to our humanity, or to our myth-making tendencies; they appeal to the
purely intellectual, impersonal force within us. Though all our gods
totter and fall, science goes its way; though our hearts are chilled and
our lives are orphaned, science cannot turn aside, or veil its light. It
does not temper the wind to the shorn lamb.
Hence the scientific conception of the universe repels many people. They
are not equal to it. To think of life as involved in the very
constitution of matter itself is a much harder proposition than to
conceive of it as Bergson and Sir Oliver Lodge do, as an independent
reality. The latter view gives the mind something more tangible to lay
hold of. Indeed, science gives the mind nothing to take hold of. Does
any chemical process give the mind any separate reality to take hold of?
Is there a spirit of fire, or of decay, or of disease, or of health?