What is life?

the long version

What is life? What is man? And what is the mysterious power by virtue of which we say that we are alive? Treating his subject with the care and patience of the scientist, the author also writes from the point of view of the philosopher and the man of religion. Man, he feels, is more than living dust, indeed the essential characteristic of life is a ceaseless striving to build up its specific substance from materials which, left to themselves, tend only to revert to the inanimate state. Thus life, while maintaining itself by physical and chemical processses, belongs to a realm transcending both physics and chemistry.