A. C. Morrison writes:
Life is a sculptor and shapes all living things; an artist that designs every leaf of
every tree that colors the flowers the apple the forest and the plumage of the bird of paradise. Life is a musician and has taught each bird to sing its love songs the insects to call each other in the music of their multitudinous sounds.
every tree that colors the flowers the apple the forest and the plumage of the bird of paradise. Life is a musician and has taught each bird to sing its love songs the insects to call each other in the music of their multitudinous sounds. Life has given to man alone mastery over combined sound vibrations and has furnished the material for their production.
Life is an engineer for it has designed the legs of the grasshopper and the flea the coordinated muscles levers and joints the tireless beating heart the system of electric nerves of every animal and the complete system of circulation of every living thing.
Life is a chemist that gives taste to our fruits and spices and perfume to the rose. Life synthesizes new substances which Nature has not yet provided to balance its processes and to destroy invading life... Life's chemistry is sublime for not only does it set the rays of the sun to work to change water and carbonic acid into wood and sugar but in doing so releases oxygen that animals may have the breath of life.
Life is a historian for it has written its history page by page through the ages leaving its record in the rocks an autobiography which only awaits correct interpretation.
Life protects its creations by the abundance of food in the egg and prepares many of its infants for active life after birth or by conscious motherhood stores food in preparation for her young. Life produces life-giving milk to meet immediate needs foreseeing this necessity and preparing for events to come.
'Matter has never done more than its law decree. The atoms and molecules obey the dictates of chemical affinity the force of gravity the influences of temperature and electric impulses. Matter has no initiative but life brings into being marvelous new designs and structures. What life is no man has yet fathomed; it has no weight or dimensions... Nature did not create life; fire-blistered rocks and a saltless sea did not meet the necessary requirements. Gravity is a property of matter; electricity we now believe to be matter itself; the rays of the sun and stars can be deflected by gravity and seem to be akin to it. Man is learning the dimensions of the atom and is measuring its locked-up power but life is illusive like space. WHY?
Life is fundamental and is the only means by which matter can attain understanding. Life is the only source of consciousness and it alone makes possible knowledge of the works of God which we still half blind yet know to be good' (Man Does Not Stand Alone. New York. 1945 pp.31-6)
