On this explanation these phenomena of "action at a distance"
are at least intelligible; while to me, and I speak now as a scientist,
they are intelligible in no other way.
III
There is another line of thought which has to do with living organisms,
but which I shall beg leave to anticipate and bring in here at the close
of this chapter, since it follows as a direct corollary from the law of
the Conservation of Energy. Indeed, we might even term it the biological
aspect of that law.
As we have seen, we can neither create energy nor destroy it; though we
can _lose it_,--so far as this earth is concerned. The vast fund of
energy that daily comes streaming to us from the sun is transmuted back
and forth in a thousand ways, though little by little it is dissipated
off into space, and we are dependent upon a fresh supply from the ever
replenished fountain.
Just so, though in a somewhat idealistic sense, is it with what we may
term vital energy. Cells, organisms, even whole races, are subject to
degeneration and decay. They cannot acquire higher powers, though they
may gradually lose what they already have; as Bateson has recently told
us that whatever evolution there is must be by loss and not by gain.
Water very easily runs down hill; but cannot go up hill in and of
itself.
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