The Breath of Life

Abstract

TWO ideas struggle for mastery in the mature reflections of this lover of nature and poetry: the one the super-mechanical and super-chemical character of living creatures, the other the continuity of natural processes and the universality of natural law. Living organisms transcend machinery; they are so persistent, insurgent, constructive, and inventive; but they are not possessed by any extraneous entelechy. They are solidary with the inanimate, though the creative energy or “procreant urge” finds freer expression in them than it does in crystal or star. It is a modernised hylozoism to which the essays composing this volume give beautiful expression: “The psychic arises out of the organic, and the organic arises out of the inorganic, and the inorganic arises out of—what? The relation of each to the other is as intimate as that of the soul to the body; we cannot get between them even in thought, but the difference is one of kind and not of degree.” There is much in the volume about the wonders of the inorganic domain, especially under the eyes of modern chemists and physicists, but the refrain is always what Tyndall called “the mystery and the miracle of vitality.” Thus, to mention half of the fascinating studies, we have discussions of “The Breath of Life,” “The Living Wave,” “The Baffling Problem,” “Scientific Vitalism,” and “The Vital Order.”

The Breath of Life.

By John Burroughs. Pp. xi + 295. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1915.) Price 5s. net.