28 PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE. 



the vast array of living forms, with which we are sur- 

 rounded, constantly growing, increasing, decaying, and 

 disappearing ; the animal constantly attracting, modify- 

 ing, and applying to its sustenance the matter of the 

 vegetable kingdom, which derived its support from the 

 absorption and conversion of inorganic matter. And 

 so constant and universal is this absorption, waste, and 

 reproduction, that it may be said with perfect certainty 

 that there is left in no one of our bodies at the present 

 moment a millionth part of the matter of which they 

 were originally formed ! We have seen, again, that 

 not only is the living matter derived from the inor- 

 ganic world, but that the forces of that matter are all 

 of them correlative with and convertible into those of 

 inorganic nature. 



This, for our present purposes, is the best view of 

 the present condition of organic nature which I can lay 

 before you : it gives you the great outlines of a vast 

 picture, which you must fill up by your own study. 



In the next lecture I shall endeavour in the same 

 way to go back into the past, and to sketch in the same 

 broad manner the history of life in epochs preceding 

 our own. 



